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THE 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH, 

IN VEKSE, 



OB, 



POEMS ON SLAVERY, 



GRAVE, HUMOROUS, DIDACTIC, AND SATIRICAL. 



BY 



SENNOIA RUBEK. 



NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY EVERARDUS WARNER, 

1 VESEY STREET (ASTOR HOUSE). 



'^^ /-H^J'^./^^ 






Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1S64, 

By EVERAEDUS 'WAENEE, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Southern District of New York. 



z 4 ({ 



; 



C. A. Alvoed, Stereotyper and Printer. 



PREFACE. 



The following Poems touch, in their nearest and dearest interests, 
all orders and degrees of human beings, — all religious denominations 
and parties, — all trades, professions, and occupations of life. The 
farmer, the courtier, the peasant, and the peer, — the orator, the 
philosopher, and the poet, — kings and subjects, — priests and people, — 
governors and the governed, — theologians and politicians, — master and 
mistress, — man-servant and maid-servant, — Jew, Gentile, Greek, Barba- 
rian, — bond and free, — will find in this our little Manual of Slavery, 
not that only which is the subject and the object of abstract reflec- 
tion, but much also that is calculated to excite to an active benev- 
olence those individual and personal emotions which vibrate with 
the force of a moral electricity through all the springs of feeling in 
the heart. " 

The Methodist, Presbyterian, Unitarian, Baptist, and Episcopal 
churches and congregations are especially noticed in their attitudes 
respectively towards negro slavery ; nor does the author fail to 
mention, alas ! that it should be in terms so incommensurate with 
their exemplary consistency and sterling merit, the efforts of the 
excellent Society of Friends in the great and glorious cause of eman- 
cipation from human bondage. 

3 



PREFACE. 



These Poems contain, moreover, in the notes and in the text, many 
salient points for commendation in our freemen, our women, our laws 
and institutions ; and for satire, in Southern Slavery, conventions, 
fillibusterism, Georgian theology, domestic troubles, etc. Would that 
the Manual may prove to the public a soul-stirring fountain of whole- 
some and murmuring waters, — " Querulis fons garrulus undis^ 

The verdict of the Public, be it favorable or otherwise, we trust 
we shall patiently abide, concluding meanwhile with the motto of 
Spenser, — 

"Goe, little Booke: thyself present, 
As child whose parent is unkent ! 
And when thou art past jeopardee, 
Come tell me what was said of mee, 
And I will send more after thee.^ 



THE PUBLISHER. 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



SCENES m CONGKESS. 



Thou Cambrian pillar of the Golden State, 

The muse of Satire summons thee, though late, 

To bare thy head and heavenward lift thy hand. 

Before that dread tribunal of our land, — 

A people outraged by thy shameful brawls, 

Within the sacred precincts of those halls 

Where wisdom, truth, and equity preside. 

And law and reason flourish side by side. 

Such brawls are only worthy of the zones 

Where bears and panthers strive with picaroons, — 

Worthy the roles of those Francisco hells 

Where lust of gain with murderous riot dwells, — 

Worthy the school where blood-stained Herbert, learned 

In every vice, for civic honors yearned, 

And gained them, too ; to add to our disgrace, 

The sickening horrors of his brazen face ! 

Is it for statesmen silvered o'er with age, 
In ruthless vengeance thus to fume and rage? — 
To call, in accents savage and untoward, 
Their peer " a liar, slanderer, canting coward ?" — 
To rush with rampant fury from their chairs 
(As beasts of prey from out their hidden lairs). 
And fight with canes, revolvers, or their fists. 
Like ruffian bullies in our prize-fight lists ; 
5 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



Or creep with velvet footsteps like an ounce, 
And, unawares, upon their victims pounce ? 
Ye Gods ! Not thus did ^scliines contend ; 
Not thus Demosthenes, to gain his end, 
To checkmate monarchs, or to win a crown, 
Of Athens worthy — worthy his renown ; 
Not thus contended Bacon with his peers, 
Or the whole crew of slanderous garreteers ! 

When Tully's thunder burst o'er Piso's head. 
And flash on flash his fiery lightnings sped, 
They showed how truth and honor were at strife 
In Piso's public and his private life ; 
Showed him in both, a tyrant, fool, poltroon, 
A swinish sot, a robber and bufi'oon. 
Nor less, when Antony and Catiline 
Their country's freedom sought to undermine, 
The patriot statesman winged his words of wrath, 
With tones prophetic, o'er their traitorous path, — 
Yet not from private malice sought their doom. 
But as the common enemies of Rome« 

From Chatham's lips more graceful satire hear. 
In whispering, " Gentle shepherd, tell me where !" 
Or learn from Grattan's most impassioned tongue 
To be severe, and yet to do no wrong. 

From Brougham take the thunder and the nod. 
The forked lightning and the scorpion rod. 
The barb, the lash, the nettle, and the thorn. 
The victim skulking from his withering scorn, 
The quivering muscle and the neck awry. 
The conjuring spectre in his glaring eye. 
Snake-like as cholera ; while, with sovereign power, 
6 



SCENES IN CONGRESS. 



lie scales the rampart and assaults the tower — 

The tower of life — and cries, This soul is mine, 

Nor soul or body shall I e'er resign, 

Till I have made them both subserve the cause 

Of truth and justice, liberty and laws ! 

Yet Brougham never dealt destructive blows, 

With arms unchartered, on his bitterest foes. 

And who confesses not that perfect hit, 

Of venomed satire from O'Connell's wit, 

Pronouncing D'Israeli to have mourned his loss, 

Like his ancestral type — 'the thief upon the cross ? 

Yea, learn from Statesmen who are all our own, 
Clay, Benton, Webster, Pinckney, and Calhoun, 
To be sarcastic ; yet from reverence, fear 
To wound or jar a Senatorial ear. 
Ah me ! from Polyglotts of camps and mines, 
'Tis hard to learn a language that refines 
The want of culture in one's early life, 
With social rules is war unto the knife. 



" But G. from poverty has waxen rich !" 
What, then, but that it aggravates his itch, — 
The itch of vainly striving to be great, 
When God and nature thwart a high estate, 
In him and Herbert, who has failed to scan 
The boy as father to the full grown man. 
No truth more clear, nor creed revealed from heaven, 
Than this : " 'Tis hard to rid us of old leaven !" 
Clear as that Bruins, black, or white, or hoary, 
Are more deserving chastisement than glory ; 
Clear as that blustering violence and wrath, 
And scurvy juggles on our brilliant path 
7 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



Of Empire — check not speed the march of States, 

Which else would seek admission at our gates. 

From heroes of a vigilance committee, 

Our chief attention turn we next to thee, 

Thou Machiavelian necromancer — Slidell ! 

In diplomatic orchestras, first fiddle. 

Pallas came armed from the head of Jove, 

Or poets lie, take which side you approve ; 

In Slidcll's brain conceived a great white house, 

Has, as we feared, but issued in a mouse, 

Or other far more loathsome little thing. 

By Walcott sung, when George the Third was king. 

Yet is he in his generation wise, 

A gladiator skilled in hows and whys — 

Skilled with his fullow-brokcr financiers, 

To tnj, if possible, by bribes and fears, 

Their slaves and slave-dominion to retain 

In Cuba, purchased from the crown of Spain, 

Through schemes devised by Judah Benjamin ! 

Ah ! can our Hebrews ever cease to see 

IIow wide the gulf 'twixt bondmen and the free ; 

Forget how Moses slew an overseer, 

O'er captive exiles taught to domineer ; 

Forget a cruel tyrant's tale of bricks, 

The clanking chains, the blows, the brutal kicks, 

From which, through Moses and Jehovah's might, 

They found deliverance in the darkest night 

Of human thraldom yet endured by slaves, 

'Midst desert sands and overwhelming waves ; 

Forget, in short, their own and Egypt's plagues. 

And all but Cuba, pelf, and base intrigues ? 

Oh, Slidell ! Slidell 1 Now in thy old age. 

Dare thou be honest, though the rabble rage, 



ADDRESSED TO ALBERT PIKE. 



Though threats thine ears and gibbets greet thine eyes, 
And wreck and ruin seize the vaulted skies, 
This truth recall — " the honest are the wise^ 



ADDRESSED TO ALBERT PIKE, 

A DISTINGUISHED CITIZEN OF ARKANSAS. 
I. 

Albert Pike ! Albert Pike !* with the courage to strike 

The monster of Slavery down, 
Or wound hira, at least, as a venomous beast, 

From his soles to the scalp of his crown, 
Thou wouldst add to thy name a new chaplet of fame. 

Far beyond thy poetic renown. 

II. 
Thy platform views, well adapted to cruise •■ 

'Neath the flag of a Know-Nothing barque. 
Were never designed for the popular mind 

On the deck of our Federal ark. 
What seals up thine eye, that thou canst not descry, 

As in old Massachusetts, the sins. 
And the ruin and blame, and the sorrow and shame. 

That litter where slavery reigns ? 

in. 
Nor sorcery binds thee, nor interest blinds thee, 
To see nothing else but a fee 

* There may be many who do not know that Mr. Pike is a fine, portly looking 
man. He is of middle age, dignified presence, and high intellectual endowments. 
His hair and beard, long, thick and grizzled, and flowing to his breast, and mas- 
sive shoulders, are not unbecoming such a figure. His manners are courtoous 
and prepossessing. He would be looked upon, in any assembly of high-bred gen- 
tlemen, as a man of mark. 

9 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



In an African slave, or a Seminole knave, 

Creek, Choctaw, or vile Cherokee. 
'Tis not that thou failest, for want of due ballast, 

And often receivest such shocks, 
As light, bounding minnows escape amidst billows, 

Which Tritons* transfix on a rock : 
As waders and suckers and divers and duckers 

Eschew, both on land and on sea, 
In risks which environ from lead and cold iron, 

The dashing, the fearless, the free. 

IV. 

Thou never canst mount, man, to Helicon's fount, man, 

Till lifted on Liberty's wing ! 
With Pegasus spavined, cribbed, crippled, and bavined, f 

As thine is, no mortal can sing. 
Thy vein will not run in the shade or the sun, J 

Or fall like the rain-drops or dew ; 
'Tis an icicled prism, untouched by that chrism 

Poured out on the hallowed few. 



* S. R. does not here mean the marine divinities of that name {Tritonesque citi 
Phorcique exercilus omnis), of whose aid Neptune availed himself, according to 
Virgil, to save the fleet of Eneas from the rocks and quicksands of Barbary. 
" Cymothoe simul et Triton adnixus acuta 
Deirudunt naves Scopulo." 
He means that genus of marine, naked gastropodous mollusks, or Sea Slugs, to 
which the name Tritonia has been given by Cuvier ; or he may mean, rather, those 
marine creatures to which we apply the phrase Tritonia monsira. In short, the 
common acceptation of the words "Tritons and Minnows," will explain the 
author's meaning. 

f Bavined. S. R. takes the hberty of here using -what he considers a word preg- 
nant with meaning, as derived from the name of a small poet mentioned in a sweet 
line of VirgQ, " Qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carmina Moevi!" (See Gifford's 
Baviad and Maeviad.) Horace also has : 

"Mala soluta navisexii alite 
Ferens olentem Maevium." 
X See a volume of Poems, by A. Pike, of Arkansas. 

10 



ADDRESSED TO ALBERT PIKE. 



Aye ! Salvus sis Euge! thy beautiful ^^ Nugce''^ 

Are cloud-fringes lit by our moons, 
Electric train bows, or fragments of rainbows, 

On icebergs in Boreal zones — 
Not motion and might from the life-giving light, 

And the heat of our tropical suns. 
The wit of the poet wants nothing to show it — 

Ideas and words at his will 
Flow in ; 'tis in changing and nicely arranging 

He proves his artistical skill. 



VI. 

Why, born a poet, art slow to avow it? 

And why, as a jurist of mark, 
Remain in Arkansas,* to wane or advance, as 

A sun to revolve round a spark ? 
"We do not deny, sir, that men with one eye, sir, 

Are kings where the many are blind ; 
Nor that, like one Caesar, who wrote froiu the Weser, 

There are, who seem far more inclined 
In a hamlet at home to be first, than in Rome 

Be next to the first of mankind ; 
But thou, in those rings where none other than kings 

Contend about matters of State, 
Wouldst still hold thine own — mayhap, add a new crown 

To thy laurels in freedom's debate. 

* There are ladies and gentlemen in Arkansas who would do honor to any State 
in our Union ; but if Arkansas be not, in general progress, a half century at 
least behind most of the other States, it is grossly slandered, not by S. R., but its 
own most respectable citizens. 

S. R. trusts they will not be extreme to take amiss in these rhymes that anti- 
thetical license always conceded to those who write verse. 

11 



BURDEN OF TDK SOUTH. 



ru. 
Tlicro arc who, (Jallfd rliyrnora, mVincnl ;nirner»», 

In Jicyduys of " JVolhmc/ (o Wmr /" 
Tal<« wing from thy market, New York, or to lark it. 

Or lahor to triumph elsewhere. 
All I wret<;hc'l expc^rienoe, an author at varianco 

With piihiiHliorB touching his works; 
Ho oonRcioiiB of merit, they loath to infer it — 

Both moody m Tartarfl or Turks. 
" The voliiriie will pay," wiyn the author; " Nay, riay," 

(^.iiotJi tin; piil.li-<lier, "c';iitit not on readers 
Till tliorotitrlily piifl'ed, with your sails tensely luMed 

\n the wiri'l's-eye of ncjwsp.'iper leaders. 

VIII. 

" A Klav(;ry hater, whose work's imprimatur 

J>ato8 solely this side the Atlantic, 
Is thought to he crude, sir, or stilted or rude, sir, 

liow, vulgar, prete.ntious, pedantic. 
And v-n of all works; if Macaulay's or IJiirko's 

Had first seen tin; litrht, in New Yurie, sir, 
Wilh price mueh almled, t.lnur wi;rtli would be rated 

Much less thitii if prinleil in T'o/-/;, Kir.* 
f)nr works want the wit, or the [»ointof a eit, 

< >f .Jorrold or Jlood— say of Jjondon 1 — 

* 'I'lio prejiidido nllinlcd lo nRninsl cis-ntlnntio books, is not Fthnrod in 
tiy nil. Wi) liftV'i our Miil.nii! Aiiinirulion WociotieH, and one stmidH hut a jmor 
eiiniR'O of flndiiiK a imliiiHln'r, wlio is not in sorao way connootod with tlioiri. It 
has often lionn (witli inoro liliiiittioMS tlinn fiiirueHB or i)olil,(inoHS) roninriiod to tlio 
niitlior of tlifiso rliyrnes, timt if lio [irmHosfted tlio poetic (itiilitioH of Lowell, Long- 
fellow, or Mr. W. A. I'.utlor, lio would Hoon llnd a jmliliHlier in Now Vorli. Whon, 
in the siniplieily of his heart, lio resiiondod: "Jlow ean yon toll that J liuvo not 
written, or am nol, enpahlo of writin>{, as good jiootry as any of thorn? You 
hnvo not oxaniinod niy work ; you know nothing of its eoideiits. Many good 
writers ero now liavo wanted a Mawouns or a J>ongrnau" — a look of pity or con- 
tempt was tlio only rejuindfir vonoliflafed liini. 

I 'J 



,«,ii. 



ADDRESSED TO ALBERT PIKE. 



But once brought out there, sir (I would not despair, sir), 
Would sell, though republishod by Condon.* 



"But yours is a poem ; no need of a proem 

In these days of railroads — do hark it ? , 
Scarce Milton himself can descend from his shelf — 

Sir, poems are drugs in the market! 
Anti-Slavery, loo, sir ! it never will c/o, sir ! 

First attempt — lock it up ! my advice, sir ! 
Done to death — will not pny ! hands too full ! do^ I pray 

You, attempt something novel ; yood by, sir! 
Anti-slavery verse, be it ever so terse, 

Is not more attractive than prose is ; 
Men stare witli surprise, and tlien turn up their eyes — 

What then, sir? Sir, turn up their nose*." 



A publishing critic, with faith emporctic 

In books Hiawatha, Miles Standish, 
And Newman's new Horace — as prosy and poor asf 

Its fellows, and quite as outlandish — 
Will vastly more prize, though so many despise, 

Than authors — not known — who write verses 
Which Johnson or Dryden or Pope would take pride in, f 

While damning those metrical farces, 

XI. 

If thoughts are as gems, who their setting contemns 
O'erlooks half the work of a poet; 

* Condon. Tho inevitablo law of iliymo forces this name upon us. If there be 
aoy one of the name, a fifth or sixth rate publisher, S. R. Legs leave to assure 
him that ho (S. R.) knows nothing of that fact,. 

f Bee some excellent articles upon this subject in late numbers of tho West- 
minster and London Quarterly Reviews (Oct., 1858). 

13 



BURDEN OP THE SOUTH. 



This Horace did not, nor Lord Byron nor Scott, 

Nor Moore (even Puritans know it),* 
Machines can make rhyme, but to write a sublime 

And a beautiful poem without it, 
Requires such blank verse, or redundant or terse, 

As Shakespeare's or Milton's throughout it. 
Not to rhyme is as easy, mayhap, as some leasy 

Blank-verser may find when it boots him, 
Under any pretence, or of sound or of sense. 

To thrum some new gamut that suits him. 



XII. 

Hexaraetrical length, if ;?er se it had strength, 

Yet suits not our language or people ; 
Its rhythmus sans rhyme, out oi place, out of time., 

Is like a high church with low steeple. 
Horatian feet are, in English metre. 

Let publishers think what they may, 
Excepting a few, which we cannot eschew, 

Like Philomel mocked by a jay. 
To thee, our Prince Albert, with stylus or halbert, 

Prepared for stoccado or tierce, 
These strictures apply not, provided you try not 

That frothy hexameter verse. 

XIII. 

A volume of rhymes, says the Ckarleston TimeSj 
By recent nem. con. resolution, 

* Sydney Smith (not the Admiral) had the manliness to admire the poetry of 
Lord Byron; not so Robert Hall, though quite as good a jadge of its beauties. 
As for Moore, we know him to have been tabooed in public by some who carried 
about a pocket edition of his poems, which passed for a " Book of Discipline 1" 

14 



ADDRESSED TO ALBERT PIKE. 



Is now in the press of Buchanan and Hess, 

To prove of Divine institution 
— Patriarchal, monarchal, mayhap oligarchal — 

Our Southern Slave Constitution. 
Ye Gods ! can a Muse thus descend to the stews 

Of past ages, to aid in oppression — 
To fetter the free, bend to tyrants the knee, 

And propagate wrong and aggression ? 
No Muse but some doxy — perhaps of Biloxi — 

Deficient in spirit and flight, 
Unable to mount or to Helicon's fount, 

Or Solyma's loftier light, 
Can fail of opposing and loudly exposing 

This cursed and foul importation 
Of slaves from abroad, which add still to the load 

Of our own and our land's degradation. 
Send, Heaven, some Tyrtaeus, with lyrical virtues, 

Some Cowper, or Campbell, or Byron, 
To rescue the slave from the fetters that grave 

On his spirit the signet of iron. 



Thou, certes, thy level, sans plummet or bevel, 

"Wouldst find in a Northern State ; 
But, then, competition's the normal condition 

Of all who aspire to be great. 
Go plead for the slave in the land of the brave, 

The noble, the gifted, the free ; 
'Tis freedom alone can give spirit and tone 

To a leader, a genius like thee !* 



* S. R. differs toio codo from Mr. Pike's Know-Nothing and pro-slavery views ; 
but, setting these aside, had, before the rebelHon, the highest respect for his char- 
acter, and admiration of his fine talents. 

15 



BUEDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



XV. 

What ! thou as a trooper to serve under Cooper,* 

That traitorous robber and thief, 
Who bartered his soul to Commissioner Dole, 

In league with a Chickasaw chief? 
But, no ; not to Dole did he barter his soul ; 

Dole's conscience is clear of those evils 
Of treason and fraud and oppression — fit load *' 

For a man with a legion of devils. 
Field added to field, and chicane for a shield, 

And gold filched from Treasury vaults. 
May seem for a while rebel hearts to beguile, 

But Justice, if slow, never halts ! 
When Cooper is found cither gaffed or harpooned, 

He will learn that the faith of a savage 
Is just like his own, and is founded alone 

On license to scalp and to ravage. 
The hordes he has led will all pray he were dead. 

And hung from a tree or the gallows, 

* "A great man, sir I a very great man, sir!" as S. Houston once ironically 
called him ; or as — mutatis mutandis — Judge Pago said of Savage, the poet, " A 
much greater man than you or I, gentle reader 1" 

Gen. Douglas Cooper, a creature of Jeff. Davis, is a big, stout, plethoric, lazy, 
whiskey-bloated Mississippi farmer, who is just enough of a lawyer to be a rogue 1 
His raoutli is an open sepulchre, garnished by a row of teetli like those of a large 
rip-saw out of order. His expression of countenance, as exhibited in his photo- 
graph in Pennsylvania Avenue, at Washington, reveals the whole character of the 
man. Cooper prefers the garbage of an Indian life, and the wind-falls of an Indian 
agency (the payment of dead claimants — a most productive source of fraud), to the 
comforts and decencies of a civilized home and a refined family. 

Shortly before tlie rebellion, he went to Washington with some Indian chiefs ; 
and, having represented himself as the most loyal of Unionists, succeeded in get- 
ting a large sum of money, with a view of keeping the Indians faithful to the 
government. Cooper of course had the lion's share of the spoils, and soon showed 
his rebel color?. Commissioner Dole considers him the greatest of all the scoun- 
drels called forth by the rebellion, and so do I. Nothing could equal Cooper's 
exuberance of joy on the occasion of Brooks's assault upon Mr. Sumner. 

16 



POETS AXD STATESMEN \rEESCS SLAVERY. 



Nay, hang him themselves, and divide him in halves, 

One half to each tribe of his fellows. 
Like some of thy name, and of classical fame,* 

He has swallowed the hook with the bait, 
To tumble and toss, with no very small loss 

Of patience and blubber and weight. 



POETS AND STATES:MEN veesus SLAVERY. 

English and American poets, Bums, Cowper, Thomas Moore, Bryant, Long- 
fellow, Hoyt, and others specia lly referred to ; publishers and editors of newpapers, 
and clergymen, with certain politicians and municipal ofiBcers ; glance at Pitt, 
"V\'ilberforce, and Burke ; comparison with Juvenal and Persiua. Note on the char- 
acter and writings of Burke. 

Who wings to heaven his eagle flight, 

With Milton's Muse, or, in the light 

Of Shakespeare, humankind surveys, 

All nature open to his gaze ; 

Or studies him of gracious mien, 

The author of the Faery Queen ; 

Or glorious Dryden, great and strong, 

In eclogue, apologue, and song ; 

Crabbe, Southey, Wordsworth, Collins, Gray, 

Or unsophisticated Gay ; 

Or the transcendent verse of Pope, 

Or him who sang " primaeval hope," 

And waked the slumbering hills to ringr 

With echoes of sweet Wyoming, 

Must own that aU with ecstasy. 

As men of genius, noble, free. 

Bold, fearless, hating tyranny, 

♦ See Lucian's Dialogues. 
2 17 



BURDEN OP THE SOUTH. 



Have heralded the certain doom 
Of Slavery in Christendom. 

Hail ! Thompson, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Young ! 

Hail ! Scotia's sweetest child of song ! 

Thou bard of passionate desire, 

Chief minstrel of the festal lyre. 

High priest and prophet of the heart, 

The model type of artless art — 

Nay, genius far above all rules, 

Or read in books, or taught in schools ; 

Though oft by moral tempests toss'd 

On disappointment's rocky coast — 

In act and word and soul of thought 

Humanitarian throughout. 

Thrice hail ! Beloved and gentle bard, 

Illustrious author of the Task ! 
What Argus eyes, what watch or ward, 

What expurgation and what mask. 
What venal publisher or printer. 
What brutal overseeing Stentor, 
What sordid sycophant or sharper, 
What Scribner, Appleton, or Harper, 
What vile disunionist diurnal, 
Who only cares to sell his journal, 
What Brooks, what Bonner, or what Bennet, 
What Toombs or Slidell of the Senate, 
What Buncombe babbler or quill-man, 
What puflSng literary pill- man, 
What tricky, mercenary wag, 
With bogus insults to our flag, 
What Cashing and O'Connor flunkeys. 
Astute and mischievous as monkeys, 
18 



POETS AND STATESMEN versus SLAVERY. 

Or spiders, weaving chains and checks 

For white men's tongues and black men's necks 

Who dare, at freedom's high behest, 

The sum of villanics detest, 

What Raphael, Prentice, or Van Dyke, 

Who, like a fierce, voracious pike. 

To kidnap men and God to libel, 

Rend freedom's charter in the Bible — 

What Mayor Wood or Marshal Rynders, 

With threatening fists and gnashing grinders, 

And cries of treason and sedition 

Against the friends of abolition ; 

Nay, who, with blasphemies comitial, 

In solemn guise of forms official, 

From God, the source of every joy, 

Would stay the homage we employ 

When in his temple we appear, 

To hail him sovereign of the year ; 

What dastard vigilance committee. 

With coat of feathered tar to fit ye. 

If, like the lion-hearted Beecher, 

Sweet freedom's consecrated preacher. 

Ye through the pulpit or the press 

Should seek a negro-slave's release. 

Can quench the light through which thy muse 

The countless wrongs of Slavery views, 

Or drown thy hymn of Freedom's birth 

O'er all the nation's of the earth ? 

And thou, our bright Anacreon, 
The Muses' most melodious son ! 
Thou Saxo-Celtic little Naso, 
In love and song renowned a Tasso, 
19 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



As Horace finished, faultless, witty, 
Whether the angels' loves or Kitty, 
Or wine, or Erin's rocky shore, 
Or Ind or Afric please thee more, 
What heart, transported by thy lyre, 
And touched with Freedom's hallowed fire, 
Can dare her preciousness decry, 
Nor curse the ills of Slavery 1 



Or thine, our venerated Bryant, 

For Freedom's rights alone defiant, 

In joyous youth and hoary age 

The friend of Freedom's heritage, 

Whose muse admits nor word nor thought 

Which, dying, thou couldst wish to blot. 



Go forth. Apocalyptic Angel ! 
With Longfellow's divine evangel. 
Sweet poet of the golden lyre. 
To warm the heart, the spirit fire. 
And herald, over land and sea, 
The captive exile's jubilee ! 



Or dearer Hoyt's enchanting muse, 
To paint in all the rainbow's hues 
Scenes glowing, heartfelt, bright, serene. 
As ever tasked a poet's pen, — 
Fair scenes of love and joy and peace, 
And heavenly harmony and grace. 
And light as pure as that which throws 
Its purple rays on polar snows. 

20 



POETS AND STATESMEN teesus SLAVERY. 



Here Life and Landscape* both agree 
To wake thy touching minstrelsy ; 
And there, alike o'er earth and ocean, 
Echoes of Memory and Emotion ; 
And last, not least, thine Livalid, 
Sweet Freedom's purposes to aid. 

See Lowell, Whittier, Doane, and Morris, 
Bards worthy of the praise of Horace, 
Poe, Parker, Sigourney, and Child, 
And Willis,f sage of Idlewild ! 
See also here the declamation. 
And eke the ratiocination, 
Of Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Channing, 
Of Pitt, and Fox, and greater Burke,| 

* Life and Landscape, Echoes of Memory and Emotion, and the National Invalid, 
by the Rev. Ralph Hoyt, Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, New York. 
Mr. Hoyt is one of the sweetest of our poet.s, and one of the most faithful, labo- 
rious, and indefatigable of pastors. His poetrj^, published in two volumes, is a mine 
of gold — a well of pure and sparkling waters, springing from the depths of a tender, 
compassionating spirit, and arched by a rainbow of the richest and rarest colors. 
A man of exquisite taste and judgment, genial, hopeful, generous, confiding, self- 
reliant, and possessing a noble independence of character — to know is to honor 
and esteem him. Is it not lamentable that a man of such talents, so loving and 
so lovable, with a large family, all zealous as himself in the cause of religion, being, 
in fact, his organists, choristers, sextons, vestrymen, and wardens, should be de- 
pendent for support, as doubtless he is in a great measure, if not altogether, 
upon a small annual fluctuating income, the free-will offerings of a poor congrega- 
tion, and less in amount than a single Sunday collection in Grace Church or Trmity, 
St. Paul's or St. George's? 

f S. R. has learned, since the above lines were written, that Messrs. Morris and 
Willis are rather advocates than opponents of Southern slavery. A yjco for the 
reputation — moral, literary, or rehgious — the posthumous reputation, that is, of 
any one, poet, orator, philosoislier, theologian, or statesman, who advocates human 
bondage 1 

I Edmund Burke. This transcendent genius, one of the most profound and bril- 
liant of Enghsh writers — if not decidedly the first — the greatest orator among 

21 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



And others who promote their work, 
The fire on Freedom's altar fanning. 
Scarce with more vehemence at Rome, 
Where vice and folly made their home, 
Did Juvenal and Persius sear 
Bawds, panders, parasites, and tear 
The mask from villany, than those 
"Who, or in poetry or prose, 

philosophers, and the greatest philosopher among statesmen — a prophet and more 
than a prophet, politically — 

" Quern gloria rerum commendat clarumque decus ;" 

a man who, though more unjustly damaged by a distich than any other distin- 
guished person save Lord Bacon ; who, though often accused by his adversaries 
of partisan blindness, bitter prejudice, gross exaggeration, tergiversation, and 
inconsistency of all kinds, will, if the circumstances under which his apparently 
conflicting sentiments were expressed, be duly taken into consideration, stand 
forth before the world, not only as a colossus of intellectual power, above the 
measure of his contemporaries, but as the most clear-sighted, upright, candid, 
fearless, and consistent of public men in any age or country. This illustrious 
man, we repeat, the most formidable enemy that corruption and oppression in 
high places have ever encountered, is sometimes ignorantly pressed into tho ser- 
vice of pro-slavery advocates, because he has given to the world a sketch of a 
code of laws for the correction of abuses in the government of plantation negroes, 
and for the regulation of the African slave-trade with the "West India colonies of 
Great Britain. 

That he thought its abolition more advisable than any scheme of reformation ; 
that he heartily wished it at an end ; that he regarded it as the sense of the 
House of Commons that tho trade should gradually decline, and cease altogether 
after a definite period ; that he conceived the true origin of the trade was not in 
the place at which it xuas begun, but at the place of its final destination ; that he felt 
disposed to allow the evil for a time, in order the better to correct it ; that his plan 
would lead to its final extinction ; that he trusted infinitely more, according to the 
sound principles of those who ever have, at any time, meliorated tho state of man- 
kind, to the effect and influence of religion than to all the rest of the regulations 
put together, are, in so many words, with many others wisely delivered, his views 
upon the subject in his prefatory letter to Mr. Duudas, and in the following pre- 
amble of the sketch referred to : 

^'WJiereas, it is expedient and most conformable to the principles of true 
religion and morality, and to the rules of sound policy, to put an end to all traffic 
in the persons of men, and to the detention of (heir said persons in a state of slavery, 
as soon as the same may be effected without producing great inconveniences in 

22 



POETS AND STATESMEN versus SLAVERY. 



Through Britain's isles or these our States, 
Great chartered soil of free debates, 
The wrongs of slavery condemn, 
As far more criminal in men 
Who Christianity profess, 
Than 'tis to those who prayers address 
To stocks and stones, and bend the knee 
In error and idolatry. 

the sudden change of practices of such long standing, and during the time of the 
continuance of said practices, it is desirable and expedient, by proper regulations, 
to lessen the inconveniences and evils attendant on the said traffic and state of 
servitude, until both .shall be grachialhj done away, etc. Be it enacted, etc., etc." — 
(Burke's Works, vol. ii., pp. 389, 390. Harper, 1847.) 

An article on Burke, from a late number of the British Critic, takes, as remarked 
by a New York journal (20th Jan., 1859), a different view of the character and 
talents of that orator and politician from that which has generally been expressed. 
The writer in the Critic asserts that Burke misunderstood the character and ten- 
dency of the French Revolution ; that he picked up a few facts favorable to his 
prejudices and his sophistries, but of the tragedies in a million homes, &c., he was 
profoundly ignorant, (a very ignorant man, no doubt, was Burke 1) picking up a 
few facts, &c. 

Our learned Theban goes on to say, that after a conscientious perusal of twenty 
volumes of Burke's works, he can conscientiously declare that he found nothing 
in them to inspire him with a lofty estimate of the head or the heart of the late 
Mr. Burke. 

We have never had the good fortune to read twenty volumes of Mr. Burke's 
writings, and are not a little surprised that a man who found nothing in the head 
or heart of Mr. Burke to admire, should engage in an undertaking so unprofitable ; 
and that, too, in all probability, with very much to admire in other writings around 
him. On reading the opinion of this critic, we opened our second volume of Mr. 
Burke's works, at the Letters on a Regicide Peace ; we glanced at the Letter to 
a Noble Lord, the Letter to Mr. Elliott, the Thoughts on French Affairs, and on 
Scarcity ; we looked into a few of his speeches, closed the volume, and pronounced 
the man who could see nothing, in even a tithe of what we had perused in one 
short sitting, to inspire him with a lofty estimate of the head and heart of the 
late Mr. Burke, a prodigy of obtuseness, hearllcssness, and prejudice. See the 
opinions of such men as Lords Brougham and Macaulay, Lord John Russell, and 
William Hazlitt. 

In short, no one man, in ancient or modern times, has bequeathed to statesmen 
and politicians so rich a legacy of political wisdom and eloquence as are the 
writings of the late Mr. Burke. 

23 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



APPEAL TO BARTH AND LIVINGSTONE. 

WITH A FEW OBSERVATIONS OS KING COTTON, AND OTHER NOTABIL- 
ITIES OF COMMERCE. 

I. 

Ye men of enterprise and worth, 
Distin<xuislied Llvinarstone and Bartli ! 
Have ye encountered, from Cape Bon 
Down to the Mountains of the Moon, 
Or on the waters of the Zaire, 
A man with woolly head or hairy ; 
Or on the Maio, near Kabara, 
Along the banks of the Kowara, 
Soudan, Felatah-land, Winhara, 
Among Tuaricks or Wikambas, 
Yungos, Balondas and Masarabas, — 
Or on the seaboard of Nyassi,* 
Or plains of Lobale or Cassai, 
Or on the mighty lake of Ngami, 
•Through Kalahari to Kruniami, — 
Or Shire's meads or Shirwa valley, 
In soil as rich as Elealeh, 
Or Euo's banks or Zomba's brow, 
Where cotton-weavers even now, 
With treadles, shuttles, warp and woof, 
Keep want and nakedness aloof, — 
Or where the Congo circumscribes 
Great Mais, chief of many tribes, — 
Or where the mighty Muanzanza 
His sovereign sway extends to Panza ; 

* Lake Nyassi, called The Sea. — See CoUoii's Atlas. 
24 



APPEAL TO EARTH AND LIVINGSTONE. 



Or Matiamvo, king of men, 

Reigns paramount o'er Barotse plain, — 

Or southward, th-ence, to Cape Agullas, 

A single nescro such a fool as 

To manifest the least desire 

To leave his country and his sire, 

That he may vegetate and rot on 

Some patch of sugar-cane or cotton, 

Tobacco, cocoa, coffee, rice, 

Or any esculent or spice ; 

A slave to one who gives but clothes 

And food, with cruel cuffs and blows; 

Who looks upon him as a brute, 

With scarce a human attribute ; 

Who, in the color of his skin. 

Sees the unpardonable sin ; 

And yet so blind and incoherent 

To deem himself as God's vicegerent. 

In that he would the man o'crdrive, 

To save the Negro soul alive ! 

II. 

Suppose that even the very worst 
Befall a slave, in lands accursed 
With Pagan ignorance and vice, 
Idolatry and prejudice — 
Can that be pleaded as a reason. 
Or any other than high-treason, 
A foolish, wicked, vain pretence 
Against both law and common sense, 
That Christians should be so malefic^ 

So destitute of all thaCs good, 
To carry on a murderous traffic 

In human flesh and human blood ? 

25 



BURDEN OP THE SOUTH. 



III. 
Some think it a most indispensable thing 
To hold men as bond slaves where Cotton is king ; 
Moreover, slaves, never as hopeless of cash, 
Work well without fear of the cudgel or lash. 
We could not, without them, produce such supplies 
As would for our millions of people suffice, 
For millions of looms, spinning-jennies and wheels, 
Employed on our robes from our head to our heels. 
Slaves all have a special regard for King Sheep-wool, 
And need in his service nor cowhide nor peep-skull.* 
King Cane must, however, have paddles and whips, 
That slaves may his nectar commend to our lips. 
'Tis only your blacks who can bear the hot stream. 
The fire and the vapor of sugar-house steam, 
As well as the culture of ginger and spice, 
Yams, coffee and cocoa, bananas and rice. 
From Texas to Spain, from Japan to Morocco, 
Black slaves are the subjects to suit King Tobacco ; 
And who to deny will be hardy enough 
That their noses were made to be servile to snuff? 
'Tis only a nigger that can with good grace 
Exhibit a dust-hole each side of his face, 
Presume, without manifest folly or sin, 
To masticate compost as black as his skin, 
Or taint our best carpets, our hearthstones and rugs. 
With pools of saliva as noisome as bugs. 

IV. 

They doubtless would also be fit for King Bom- 
Ba ! — Sense must we sever from rhyme thus to come 
Into play with King Rye, and Kings Millet and Wheat^ 
King Iron, King Brass, Copper-mines, and King Peat, 

* Peep-skull. A nick-name for Overseer. 
26 



APPEAL TO BAETH AND LIVINGSTONE. 



King Silver, King Lead, and "that merry old soul," 

The blackest of niggers, our good friend King Coal ; 

The best, we believe, of those named, on the whole, 

Good for fire and for light and for steaming and gas, 

The smelting of ores, and the shaping of glass, 

The working and moulding of copper and iron, 

Gold, silver, and tin, and all ores which environ 

The earth, or lie deeply intombed in its chawdron, 

Like gems which from heat take some shape chiliadron ; 

And last, though not least, is its use for the Press, 

The beacon of Freedom, the seal of redress. 

The touchstone of truth, hidden things to explore, 

And prove to the masses that knowledge is power. 

A muse of great note sees in John Barley-corn 

The greatest of heroes or monarchs yet born ; 

Yet some have more faith in, than all put together, 

That wise and most puissant monarch. King Leather. 

The Yankees assert that Kings Live-stock and Hay, 

Kings Butter and Cheese, rule with absolute sway. 

North of Mason and Dixon, where also Machine, 

With most other potentates, holds his demesne ; 

Yet freely admit that King Hemp and King Slaughter 

O'errule at the South, or assuredly " oughter !" 

For though our best hemp to the North owes its growth, 

'Tis more in executi/e need at the South. 

We instance their hanging of Methodist parsons. 

Most falsely accused of well-poisonings and arsons. 



Kings Brandy and Rum, and King Gin, have dominions. 
Where all, black and white, have discordant opinions ; 
Where battles are fought, and where glory is none; 
Where costards are broken with bludgeon or stone, 
As late in those riotous fights in New York, 

27 



BURDEN OP THE SOUTH. 



Where pestilent fellows from Glasgow or Cork, 

With howlings and yellings, and horrid grimaces, 

Befitting the scum of all turbulent places, 

And billets and bludgeons, and weapons of iron. 

The homes of a peaceable people environ 

(Urged on by an artful and traitorous horde. 

Secessionists all, both in deed and in word). 

For no other crime or misdoing, I ween, 

Than that which is found in the hue of their sliin. 

And drag them to death, and pursue in the streets. 

And torture and kill amidst curses and threats ! 

One fiendish, murderous ruffian, espying 

A victim of cruelty bleeding and dying. 

Uplifted a paving-stone, heavy as lead. 

And all that was human etfaced from his head ; 

But sidewalks bespattered with blood are less foul 

Than the horrible stains on that murderer's soul. 

Another swung high from a gibbet was seen. 

Calcined, it is said, in a blaze of camphene ; 

Some have it, however, that rescued, though late, 

His life was preserved from that terrible fate. 

An Orphan Asylam consumed to the ground. 

Its poor little in-dwellers flying around 

For protection, must finish what {par parenthese) 

We here can record of this devilish case. 

Can Erin, how glorious soever her sheen. 

Erase this d d spot from her emerald green ? 

More criminal far than the ruffians from Cork, 
Are those of the Copperhead crew in New York, 
Who dare to extrude from Eighth-avenue cars,* 
For no other cause than their skin and their scars, 

* Eighth- Avenue Cars, Captain Raymond, of the Harris Cavalry, during the riots 
in July, placed two negroes, a young man and a very old woman, under the pro- 
tection of the author of these rhymes. They came from Staten Island. Some 

28 



APPEAL TO EARTH AND LIVINGSTONE. 



Our soldiers, and others of African blood — 

Not one whit less pure than themselves, and as good 

(If " all men by nature are equaV) as those 

Who piously lift up their eyes and their nose, 

In loathing and hate of a down-trodden tribe, 

Meet subjects, they think, for a sneer and a gibe, 

" Because of unsavory smells from their flesh, 

As oily and tainted and rancid as fish !" 

Ah me ! there are whites who, from sweating and grease 

From nature, from habit, neglect, or disease, 

Are foul as the nastiest African throng, 

And much more offensive in act and in tongue. 

Yet such to Eighth-avenue cars are admitted — 

Nay, more : who most truculent crimes have committed, 

Are gladly received ; while poor, innocent blacks 

Are forced with contumely out on their tracks. 

Full many a time in the States of the South 

(We cannot and will not gloss over the truth) 

We've travelled in coaches with those in high life, 

But never observed, as a matter of strife. 

That slaves of all colors and shades sat beside 

Their owners with quite as much pleasure and pride 

days after the riots were quelled, the man, accompanied by his protector, re- 
turned to the island to see the Captain. There they encountered a number of 
scowling and murderous-looking ruffians, who, being in the employment of the 
government, did not dare, in open daylight, to offer violence. "We then took the 
ne.gro to New York. Having tried to enter an Eighth-avenue car, in transitu, at 
Spring street, we were rudely repulsed by the conductor, who said, " they did 
not take niggers." "We glanced at the passengers on leaving, and saw a niunber 
of fellows with whom any negro in New York would bear a favorable comparison. 
At the corner of Morris street, on the wharf, one drunken, violent vagabond 
seized our poor follower; but a determination on our part, if necessary, to sacri- 
fice our life in his defence, induced his assailant to desist. The police were, 
moreover, fortunately within call. Hav^ the railroad company any right to ex- 
clude from their cars a colored servant accompanying a white citizen — a bond fide 
servant — in the employment of such citizen ? — s. B. 

29 



BUUDEN' OF THE SOUTH. 



As the owners themselves— we should rather say more, 
For such is the love of display in the Moor ; — 
But here, whom we view as the scum of the earth, 
Disdain and abhor all of African birth ! 
So much for Eighth-avenue — now to King Cotton 
Return we, as Frenchmen are wont to our mutton.* 
Mark also Kings Marble and Timber and Brick, 
By whom a black skull is not valued a tick; 
For none have constructiveness, so it is said 
(They want both for trades and professions a head). 
By none arc they valued so much as by Log, 
Whose trunk is all sapwood, his head wrapt in fog; 
'Tis thought by such only that commerce and trade, 
If blacks were set free, would immediately fade ; 
And that with the fact lying plainly before them, 
That thousands of laboring whites would implore them 
For work, with good wages, in sugar and rice fields, 
Or any employ which a good paying price yields. 



Do look at those boat -hands employed at the South, 

Those ditch and those levy men — owning the truth. 

That ne'er in an Indian or African sun 

Was work so laborious more cheerily done ; 

Not even by our own gallant tars off Rangoon, 

Or brave British hearts, without querulous clamor. 

Now fighting in India at fifty of Eaumer. 

Make Africans free, and white labor will double 

In profit and quality, saving the trouble 

Which now, with the sense of the world in league 

Against slavery, makes it a curse and a plague. 

*Revenons a nos mouton. 
30 



APPEAL TO EARTH AND LIVINGSTONE. 



VII. 

Now what we respectfully aim at is this, 

— We trust our good friends will not take it amiss — 

That, aided by Europe, we all pay a tax 

To hasten the freedom of Southern slave blacks 

(For Europe ought certainly' help to make cease 

A curse which her people have helped to increase), 

And send them as colonists back to those lands 

From which they were forced by piratical bands; 

That our government now for these children of Juba 

Pay at least thrice ten times what it offered for Cuba. 

Would this be too much for their blood spent, and toil. 

Increasing our commerce and working our soil, 

With beggarly raiment, cheap food, and no wages, 

Sans love, sans respect^ sans approval, for ages ? 

!^ow, now ! brother freemen, or never, betake ye 

To do what Great Britain has done in Jamaica, 

For slaves ; then with jennies and frames and power-looms, 

Gins, teachers, and books, send them all to their homes. 

A thousand times better some loss to our marts, 

Than down-trodden people with desolate hearts ; 

A thousand times better abandoned plantations. 

Than consciences stung with remorse and vexations. 

VIII. 

Apparatus and seed might for sugar be tried, too. 

And steamboats and wagons, where needed, supplied, too ; 

For want of conveyance increases the trouble 

Of African farmers a hundred-fold double. 

Our freedmen, as stated, to emigrate wrought on, 

Should stop where the soil is adapted to cotton, 

Or sugar, or indigo, coffee, or rice. 

Or other productions that yield a good price. 

31 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



Not a few might be placed at Cape Coast, or Loango, 

Or up the Zambezi as highasChapongo ; 

No delta more rich, not the Ganges' or Nile's, 

Or e'en Mississippi for hundreds of miles ; 

Its rapids, 'tis said, may be easily passed, 

Deserted no longer, no longer a waste. 

IX. 

Tliere are who may live to see yet on its banks 
The empire of Saxons, the commerce of Franks ; 
Fish Bay, or the Nourse, Omarrurii, or Canna ; 
Or Elephant Fount, Wesley Vale, Batouana ; 
The Swakop, Kiusip, Chuntop Kurachane, 
Caricp or Mapoot, Gavarro, Inhainbanc 
(Inhainbano — not distant from Wilberforce Capo, 
And fit, one should think, for the culture of grape); 
The lands on the Benin, Lake Tchadd, the Kowarrff, 
Bornou and Soudan, by the Chadda, to Vari ; 
The Assinec, Voltra, Cavalla, St. Baul, 
Gallinas, Scarcios, Jeba, Senegal — 
Might all be by millions of colonists planted. 
Who with case might supply all the produce now wanted. 
Thus creating new wants, and revealing new sources, 
Give Nature new life, and mechanics new forces. 
Our planters at home, if requiring more hands 
Than we can afford, to supply their demands. 
Than slaves, or free white men, a body of Coolies, 
Would find it an easier task to control is; 
Or Peons of Mexico, better and cheaper, 
And far less in need of the eye of a keeper. 
An agent or two from our districts or counties 
Might go to engage them for suitable bounties, 
To work, as agreed, for a series of years, 
Their passage paid, and imbursed all arrears, 
32 



SONG. 

Both parties well pleased, without fear of estrangements, 

Would enter anew into former arrangements. 

Or better, by far, would it now seem to be, 

Since slaves of the rebels are all proclaimed free — 

Yea ! all who within our cordon militairc 

Seek freedom, are free as the fresh mountain air — 

That, owning their masters' sequestrated lands, 

They bold them as headmen, not less than as hands, 

And prove that the child of an African sun 

Is worthy himself and his labors to own ; 

Or, hiring as freemen for liberal wages, 

Raise cotton or sujxar as eacb one enffajxes — 

Contented to own, or to live on the soil, 

In climates best suiting their tastes and their toil. 

Their masters have taught them the art of production — 

'Twere strange if they failed to improve the instruction ; 

Enlarging their minds, and their comforts and homes. 

And sending all nations supplies for their looms. 

They'll think of past tyranny only to hate it, 

And sing, Deus nobis hcec otia fecit. 

We, too, to our chief now indite some new odes, 

A chief worth a legion of Mantuan gods 1 



SONG. 

ADDRESSED TO HIS EXCELLENCY ABKAHAM LINCOLN, PES8IDENT OF THE 

UNITED STATES. 

Magnanimous chief of a chivalrous nation. 

The pole-star of freedom awaits on thy name ; 
Resplendent with hope to our slave population, 

Their minds to illumine, their rights to proclaim. 
To thee 'tis reserved, in the sphere of thy duty, 

To sunder the last link of Slavery's chain : 

3 33 



BURDEIf OF THE SOUTH. 



Its wrongs to redress, and restore in their beauty- 
Stray planets to move in their orbits again. 

Awake, then, great chief, to renown in our story ! 
The nations all hail thee as destined to be 

A halo of light, and a pillar of glory. 
The hope of the bondman, the pride of the free ! 

United we stand, but divided we perish, 

So proverbed experience instructs us to think ; 
The faith we profess, and the hopes that we cherish. 

In union must rise, or in disunion sink. 
Now up with our star-spangled banner forever. 

Each new star increasing our lustre and might, 
The stripes still retaining, from bondage we sever, 

But keep as a terror to foemen in fight. . 
Awake, then, etc. 

(or this:) 
Our national chief stands revealed in his glory, 

O'er continents, oceans, and isles of the sea, 
The herald of union to Whig and to Tory, 

The friend of the slave, and the boast of the free. 
See genius and skill, and good sense and good nature, 

Integrity, eloquence, wisdom, and wit. 
With modesty marked in his every feature, 

And all with the sunshine of cheerfulness lit ! 

As Washington pure, and as Jefferson able, 

Not Adams more faithful, or Jackson more brave. 
To handle the rudder, to manage the cable. 

To right the great ship, and to master the wave. 
Then rally in force, ye Republican freemen, 

Around the bright banner of Lincoln the Wise, 
The friend of paid labor, protector of women. 

The joy of our heart, and the light of our eyes ! 
34 



A PRO-SLAVERY BISHOP. 



A PRO-SLAVERY BISHOP. 

ADDRESS TO THE HOUSE OF BISHOPS. 
I. 

He ill deserves a freeman's honored name, 

Who lulls the sense of conscious guilt and shame, 

Auspicious harbinger of future good ! 

In those who might and those who gladly would 

The slave unloose from servitude and woe, 

And in his heart bid heavenly virtues glow. 

Ye priests and teachers of a holy creed ! 

Whence comes your new commission to impede 

The growth of righteousness in human hearts ? 

That heavenly light to stifle which imparts 

Life, love, and truth, benevolence divine, 

And all that tends the spirit to refine ? 

I would not — no, for all the world holds dear — 

The advocate of slavery appear ; 

Or gloss the text which makes the captive see 

The worth, the priceless worth of liberty ! 

II. 

A bishop thou ? and Freeman is thy name I 
Oh, shame to reason ! To religion shame ! 
What! serve God's altar in his house, 
And there the cause of slavery espouse ? 
Is this to fill thy memory with the law ?* 
Thy hearers' hearts from evil to withdraw ? 
Cimmerian darkness from the soul to chase, 
The will to quicken with celestial grace ? 

* See the Ordinal in the Book of Common Prayer. 
35 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



Is this the faith on holy prophets built, 
But chief on him who cleanses from all guilt, 
The truth, the life, the way, the model rule. 
Too plain, too holy to mislead a fool ? 
Is this the unity and bond of peace — 
This the abundant gift of heavenly grace ? 
Is this the light of knowledge to impart — 
With love divine to renovate the heart ? 
Is this of truth and righteousness the path. 
Or that of cruel perfidy and wrath ? 
Is this to fly the venomed serpent's face. 
Or Gorgon's viperous tresses to embrace ? 
Is this thy people on thy heart to bear. 
And on its altar pour the oil of prayer ? 



Prophets, apostles, teachers, all were given 
In faith and love to win the souls to heaven ! 
Is he a shepherd entering at the door. 
Who hears wolves howl and hungry lions roar, 
Yet, as a hireling utterly forsworn, 
Deserts his flock in savage fury torn ? 



Ye watchmen, shepherds, stewards, divinely sent 
To teach, premonish, feed, provide, prevent ! 
Have ye of all without " a good report 1" 
Dares no one, truly, on your lives, retort 
That you have shunned God's teachings to assert- 
Nay, striven his plainest statutes to pervert ? 
Freeman ! We envy not the doubtful praise 
That made thee bishop in degenerate days. 
We envy not the powers which forge a chain 
To bind the body and the spirit stain, 

36 



A PRO-SLAVBRT BISHOP. 



And as a canker to the heart of slaves, 

From pain no respite gives but in their graves. 

V. 

From their effects to their infernal source, 

To thee belongs, distinguished Wilberforce,* 

Hereditary friend of Afric's race, 

The countless ills oi slavery to trace, 

Our Freeman's sermons to hold up to scorn, 

Conceived in blindness, of oppression born ; 

And yet, perhaps, disdain would best reply, — 

Ah ! well-a-day ! The very men he sought 
To please, by preaching creeds with error fraught, 
Soon learned to mete ineffable contempt 
On every vain and impotent attempt 
A bilious code of morals to impose 
On harmless social circles,f they arose, 
In mass ****** 
******* 

The charm was gone, the man of God retired, 
With restless zeal and quick resentment fired, 
To brand as hateful, damnable decoys — 
Shows, pageants, galas, concerts, festive joys. 
As rites of Belial all, seducing youth 
From peace and virtue, innocence and truth ! 
But why not lash the sin which most depraves 
The soul and spirit in a land of slaves? 
Why dare the sum of villanies uphold, 
As not unworthy of an age of gold ? 

* See " Reproof of the American Church," by Bishop "Wilberforce. 

\ The Rev. Dr. Freeman resigned his parish in Raleigh, rather than consent to 
have the children of his congregation taught dancing. This is the same worthy 
bishop who felt no scruples in preaching pro-slavery sermons. 

37 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



Ah me ! Did ever Christian prelate think 
'Tis right, from worldly policy, to wink 
At all the horrors of a wicked code, 
By men detested and abhorred of God, 
By all detested save, perhaps, by those 
Brought up from infancy to witness woes ; 
Which, seeing daily, they may cease to view. 
As fraught with horrors of the blackest hue. 

VI. 

Till men are chosen bishops not because 

They own slave chattels and approve slave laws, 

The Church Episcopal in Southern States 

Will never find the favor that awaits 

Those hallowed views, which only prize a crown, 

By knowledge, zeal, and saint-like labors won. 

In vain the Church's symmetry and grace. 

If hideous gangrene mar her inward peace ! 

In vain the rank and talents which adorn 

The sons and daughters in her household born, 

Till, true to lofty principles, she braves 

The foul abuses of a land of slaves ; 

Till rising in the glory of her might. 

She on her offspring pours a flood of light ; 

Or bond or freeman, ignorant or wise. 

Who needs must then her every canon prize, 

Proclaim her worth, her genial spirit feel, 

And on their hearts iuipress her hallowed seal. 

VII. 

Fathers in God 1 Chief pastors of his fold, 
Who feed his flock, his discipline uphold, 
Proclaim his word, profess a godly life, 
Eschewing wrath, ambition, worldly strife, 
38 



A PRO-SLAVERY BISHOP. 



Grave, patient, sober, faithful, firm, and kind, 

Experienced, wise, enlightened, and refined. 

Say should applause, or bonds, or hope of pelf, 

The face of tyrants or the love of self, 

One jot or tittle of your rights abate, 

The sacred rights of your exalted state, 

As overseers to feed the flock of Christ, 

Each as his envoy, almoner, and priest, — 

To teach that all in him are born free. 

Their chart his life, his word their panoply. 

What is the freedom granted negro slaves ? 

What but the license which the heart depraves, 

And not the franchise which from ruin saves. 

Is there a church for black men as for white ? 

Is it in negroes wrong to read and write ? 

Or must we have the warrant of a skin, 

To save us from the punishment and sin 

Of reading that which you, on oath, declare 

Contains all truth essential to prepare 

Those souls, through faith, to save themselves alive, 

Who keep its laws, its oracles believe ?* 

vui. 
Right Reverend Seers ! well skilled in holy writ, 
By prayer and faith and meditation fit 
The truth to teach, beware lest you abuse 
Your gifts to lead us into perverse views, — 
Lest you ordain or venture to send forth 
Those who, like wolves, consider not the worth 
Of bond and free, alike the sons of God, 
Who holds supreme the balance and the rod. 

* Article 6. — Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation ; so 
that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be re- 
quired of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thouglit 
requisite or necessary to salvation. 

39 



BURDEN OP THE SOUTH. 



In short, who may, but will not, one and all, 
To Jews and Gentiles testify like Paul. 
Are you apostles, prophets, teachers given 
To win to Christ, to educate for heaven ? 
And shall you reverend fathers dare obtrude, 
Upon his priesthood, men who would exclude 
From sacred functions those whose greatest sin 
Is only in the color of their skin ? 
Ah ! is it thus that Paul to us is known ? 
That John or James or Polycarp, renown, 
As Christian martyrs, from the world have won ? 
Or, better still, a glorious crown on high, 
From Him, the Source of Immortality ?* 

IX. 

To you, right reverend father, it is given, 
By right of holy heritage from heaven, 
To aid the feeble, and to guide the blind, 
The outcast rescue, and the lost one find, 
With mercy tempering justice in reproof, 
Nor from the humble standing far aloof — 
Beseech, exhort, rebuke, instilling hope. 
Nor yet to erring men give rampant scope ; 
Yourselves, your lives, as archetypes approve. 
Of faith and truth and piety and love. 

X. 

Where in that Bible, or the Common Prayer, 
Those costly gifts to England's royal heir. 

Canst thou, good ,f to a text refer 

Which seems a chartered title to confer, 

*"I am the Resurrection and the Life." See a sermon on this subject by 
Melville. 

f The Rev. Dr. is reported to have preached a strong pro-slavery sermon 

in Trinity Church, soon after his presentation of a Bible and Prayer Book 
to the Prince of Wales. 

40 



A PRO-SLAVERY BISHOP. 



On Christian men, to purchase human souls, 
Or at the hnc, the tropic, or the poles ; 
Nay, soul and body as their chattels own, 
In perpetuity from sire to son — 
In short, an African to steal or buy 
In false pretence of Christian charity ? 

And why suppose that England's gracious queen, 

Or English loyal subiects, could have been 

Well pleased with gifts from those who fain would try 

The sum of vilianies to justify? 

The very stones, methinks, might well cry out. 

Thy slavery texts and doctrines to refute — 

Cry out from tablets, minarets, and walls, 

Whence sweetly echoing memory recalls 

The captive exile hastening to be free. 

O'er every island, continent, and sea. 

Where'er Britannia's sword has cut in twain 

The clanking fetters of a bondman's chain, 

Or where Britannia's genius has unfurled 

The flag of freedom o'er a ransomed world. 

When Korah, in the tabernacle's porch, 
With incense kindled at the sacred torch 
Of God's high altar, rashly sought to break 
A ritual usage, and presumed to take 
The hallowed charge of Aaron's priestly line. 
The earth, with horror at his base design. 
Its mouth wide opening to its darkest caves, 
Like mountain billows in the ocean waves, 
Ingulphed that rebel in a fire of hell. 
With all his crew. So rebel angels fell. 
With hideous ruin and combustion driven, 
As traitors to the monarchy of heaven. 
41 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



How much less grievous punishment do those 
Deserve, bethink you, who would interpose 
To break, not Moses' ceremonial rites, 
But every moral precept that incites 
To faith and hope and charity and love, 
And joy and peace, descending from above ? 
Yet such the guilt of one who now defends 
The trade in souls, to compass private ends. 

Couldst thou, O Seabury !* fathom the contempt 

With which the South regards thy vain attempt 

To cotton up with sophistry and art 

That foulest ulcer of the human heart 

Called ne^ro Loiidaf/c, it could scarcely fail 

To damp thy faith, to mitigate thy zeal. 

Hast thou not, from the progress of events, 

The moral feelings and the common sense 

Of all mankind, discerned the party stripe 

Of those — the vilest of all human type ! — 

Who buy and sell and steal and part for life , 

Friends, children, parents, kindred, man and wife ? 

Doubtless there are who wish their surpliced tools 
Should chop the jargon logic of the schools 
Like thee, as shrewd apologists for knaves 
Who profit largely in the trade of slaves. 
Doubtless promotion in the Church or State 
Is oft the lot of those who advocate 
Pro-slavery views, and hope to find amends, 
In rich incumbencies, for loss of friends. 

Priests, bishops, deacons guide, most gracious Lord, 
In all the saving doctrines of thy word. 

♦Sec his book called "Slavery Justified!" 
42 



SCHISM AMONG THE METHODISTS. 



Let each in Sion be a shining light, 

To point the way, to dissipate the night. 

Like Samson strong, and dexterous to show 

How Slavery's chains dissolve like wreaths of snow. 



SCHISM AMONG THE METHODISTS. 

Schism among the Metliodista, North and South. — Remonstrance. — Slavery 
cause of Schism. — Otlier baneful clTucts of Slavery and Mammon-worship. — Twin 
idols. — One Avorsliipped in the temple of the otlier. — Vain hope by ('hurch niom- 
borship alone to be saved from tlie effects of such a curse. — Wesley and his dis- 
cipline. — Preachers inconsistent, who, as Methodists, own Slaves. — Allusion to a 
celebrated Irish leader of insurrection. 

Presbyterians. — Wliat they have done for negro emancipation. — Rome, Arcli- 
bisliop Hughes. — Mode by whicli Presbyterians miglit abolish Slavery, at least in 
their own Church. — The child Mortara. — Our interference. — Grievances at home 
to be remedied. — No sympatliy for poor negroes. — The novel, Stanhope Burleigh. — 
Toung America. 

Unitarians. — Tlieir great men. — "Why Clay, Webster, and Calhoun will go down 
to posterity with diminished lustre. — Cassius M. Clay. — His noble character. — 
Gov. Chase of Oliio. — Baptists. — Episcopalians. — Drawback to the success of tlio 
Cluirch. — The Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers. — Their consistency 
and great benevolence. — Louise, a slave. — liachael Barker. — Her transcendent 
loveliness and kindness. 

I. * 

Church North ! Churcn South ! Ah me ! what dire disgrace 

The sacred mark of Union to efface, * 

And in its room laboriously bring in 

Schism, the first-born of the man of sin ! 

Is Christ divided? Nay, his constant prayer 

For his disciples was that they should e'er 

Speak the same thing, be ever of one mind. 

In love and faith and verity conjoined. 

As with the Father, perfected in one. 

The Holy Spirit and co-eiiual Son, 

In dwelling, work, in will and power the same; 

43 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



E'en so should tliose who invocate that name, 

In heart and mind, and in the bond of peace, 

For good, united work, nor ever cease, 

Till the whole earth be mantled o'er with love. 

Life, light and truth, and wisdom from above. 

But why divided are the North and South ? 

For what so indivisible as truth ? 

Is slavery, or is it not a curse ? 

Evil itself, and evil in its source. 

It comes from him, the author of all woe 

To thrones empyreal and frail man below. 

Those fihns removed which blear the mental eye. 

Pride, interest, wrath, one fails not to descry — 

Admit, lament, and candidly to trace 

The countless wrongs to Afric's sable race, 

From bondage sprung; the most atrocious crime 

That ever stained the calendar of time. 

Men of the North, long living in the South, 

To hoary age, perchance from early youth ! 

Do you, when once invested with the right — 

So law-books call it, but we need not cite — 

By marriage, death, or change, to own a slave, 

His neck, through charity, from bondage save ? 

Nay, oft of tyrants you become the worst. 

And treat your slaves as though by Heaven accurst. 

There are, indeed, who, verging towards the goal 

Of life, bethink the peril to the soul 

Of bondage, and their slaves at last make free, 

Their day of death, a day of jubilee. 

II. 
In Mammon's gorgeous fane erected high, 
On marble columns reaching to the sky, 
Stands thy grim idol, cursed slavery. 

44 



SCHISM AMONG THE METHODISTS. 



Thither thy worshipper his offering brings, 

Close to the altar of the King of kings. 

Oblation vain ! Behold him blood-stained, where 

He kneels, in solemn mockery of prayer, 

Before the throne and image of his God ; 

Hangs on his sinful soul a double load 

Of homicide and slavery, the weight. 

Yet recks he not, or would procrastinate ; 

Compounds between his conscience and the devil, 

For all his acts and tolerance of evil, 

And trusts his Church's membership will keep 

His fame alive, his spirit from the deep ! 

Ye Southern Methodists, is this the rule 

Your Wesley taught ye ? — this the sacred school 

Of faith, of morals, and of discipline, 

In which your members promise to combine ; 

Nay, body, spirit, heart and soul devote, 

Your Church to serve, the word of God promote, 

Yourselves, your neighbors, and mankind to save 

From death, eternal death, beyond the grave? 

III. 
Why do you hesitate your slaves to free. 
If you so clearly all the evils see, 
Which spring from bitter roots of slavery ?* 

* Question — "What can be done for the extirpation of the evils of slavery ? 

1st. We declare that we are as much as ever convinced of the great evil of 
slavery. Therefore no slaveholder shall be eligible to any official station in our 
Church hereafter, when the laws of the State in which he hves will admit of 
emancipation and permit the liberated slave to enjoy freedom. 

2dly. When any travelling preacher becomes an owner of a slave or slaves by 
any means, he shall forfeit his ministerial character in our Church, unless he exe- 
cute, if it be practicable, a legal emancipation of such slaves, conformably to the 
laws of the State in which he lives. 

3dly. All our preachers shall prudently enforce upon our members the neces- 
sity of teaching their slaves to read the Word of God. — Doctrines and Discipline of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, Part the second. Section of Slavery. 

45 



BURDEISr OP THE SOUTH. 



Not more incongruous or absurd the ways 

Of him who wished, while chanting freedom's praise,* 

To own plantations full of sleek-skinned slaves, 

Than is the Southern Methodist who raves 

To large assemblies met with itching ears, 

Distraught alike by Christian hopes and fears, 

With this his book of discipline before him, 

And wrath and hell and judgment hanging o'er him, 

BAPTISTS. 
Grant Heaven to Baptists what we wish to all, 
The genius, taste, and eloquence of Hall ! 

PRESBYTERIANS. 
IV. 

In grand Assembly, Kirk, or Synod, 
Where grain from chaff is deftly winnowed, 
Their learning, talents, zeal well known, 
For or against a creed or crown, 
Prove Presbyterians highly fitted 
To cause that slaves be manumitted. 
None sooner can than they discover. 
That 'tween a cattle and slave-drover, 
Or say between the beasts they drive — 
The quadruped, that is, and biped 
Whose lot is to be blobber-lipped, 
In all that is correlative — 
The difference is but what we see 
'Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee / 
For stern republicans who vow 
To lop off all the heads that bow 
In homage too profound to Rome, 
'Twere well to think we have at home 

* Jolin Mitchell. 
46 



SCHISM AMONG THE J^fETHODISTS. 



Four million souls who bend the knee 
In blind and hopeless slavery, — 
Beyond what law or conscience warrants, 
To say, at least, ten thousand tyrants ! 
The gentle reader will, we hope, 
Perceive that here we use a trope, 
As touching lopping off the heads 
Of all who say their prayers on beads. 
We mean no more than fair delivery 
From Popish tricks and Popish knavery, 
Saint worship, chiefly Mariolatry, 
As practised by the Romish Varletry, 
And other damning innovations, 
By Rome ingrafted on the nations. 
If while we thunder at John Hughes, 
And execrate bis monkish views, 
We claimed, as for ourselves, the right 
Of slaves, with energy and might — 
Such as at Westminster or Dort,* 
Gave to our measures due support, 
" And would especially decree 
An act of uniformity. 
In this : that no one have communion 
With us as Churchmen in our union. 
Who would or buy, or sell, or have 
A human being as a slave — 

* The "Westminster CoDfession, agreeing with the sentiments of the Synod of 
Dort, was approved and adopted by the General Assembly in 1647, and two years 
afterwards ratified by act of Parhament as the public and avowed confession of 
the Church of Scotland. 

By act of Parliament, in 1690, it was again declared to be the national standard 
of faith in Scotland, and subscription to it as the confession of faith specially re- 
quired of every person who shall be admitted a minister or preacher within this 
Church. Subscription to it was also enjoined, by the act of union in 1707, on all 
professors, principals, regents, masters, and others, bearing office in any of the 
Scottish Universities. 

47 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



Their clanking fetters would no more 

Disturb our peace or cramp our power. 

Touching the Jewish child Mortara, 

Why should our Presbyterians care a 

Rush for him or that rude nymph. 

Who dashed his little head with lymph ? 

The thing has done the boy no harm. 

If he had had a little more, 

To wash his skin or cleanse a sore, 

It should not generate alarm. 

Mortara pere, a mere curmudgeon, 

'Tis said, might feign to be in dudgeon ; 

Or might he not, if scant in pocket, 

Contrive a cunning trick to stock it ? 

For nothing tends like persecution 

To raise an ample contribution. 

It is, moreover, to our credit. 

That we take part with outraged merit, 

Or what as merit is regarded, 

And should, as such, be well rewarded ; 

Though often to our cost 'tis found, 

" We run the thing into the ground ;" 

Which means that virtues in extremes, 

Are but the Devil's stratagems, 

Or that who would small things attempt 

To magnify, deserves contempt, 

VIII. 

Why should our zeal for circumcision 

Expose our country to derision ? 

It makes this child a martyred hero, 

And Pio Nono bad as Nero ; 

While he, our martyr, feels most happy, 

And thinks his sympathizers sappy. 

48 



SCHISM AMONG THE METHODISTS. 



This fuss makes capital for Jews, 

And fills our journals and reviews, 

Mayhap our churches, courts, and stews, 

With fillibuster squibs and speeches, 

To think there still should be such wretches, 

As dare attempt the soul's conversion 

By means of physical coercion, 

It helps anew the agitation, 

And all the public indignation, 

That Young America extracts 

From plaints of violated pacts, 

'Tween foreign freemen and our States, 

Which Papal Rome, 'tis said, creates. 

It tries on this side the Atlantic 

To raise those riots worse than frantic — 
Which, as at Louisville, some Prentice 
The arch apostle to foment is. 
In short, our President's election, 
On the adoption or rejection 

Of resolutions pro and con, 

Regarding a decision 

Of this vexed point, perhaps depends— 

Such of small things the mighty ends 

Whether this lad be rebaptized^ 

Or as a Hebrew cicatrized. 

But is it not a patent truth 

That this much talked of little youth, 

His Hebrew birth and rites in view. 

Is less a Christian than a Jew ? 

Whether the lad be circumcised. 

Or by our sprinkling Christianized, 
With Hardshells matters not a jot- 
He must be wholly dipped, if not; 
To them both rites are just the same, 
49 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



For neither can confer a claim 

Or title to a place in heaven, 

Nor ground for faith in sins forgiven. 

IX. 

Soon as the boy becomes of age, 

He may, by right of heritage. 

Choose calling, country, home, or creed, 

And be as others free in deed. 

We do not advocate the laws 

Which hold him now in Papal claws, 

For parents, guardians are by nature 

Not barred by crime or legislature 

Of their own offspring's mode of faith, 

And all that fairly goes therewith, 

Until they reach that riper age 

Which gives them Freedom's heritage. 

We only deem it not our duty, 

On points extrinsical and knotty. 

To interfere with other nations 

By mobocratic improbations. 

X. 

There are some grievances at home 

To be redressed before we roam 

Like errant knights to seek adventures, 

By right of conquest or debentures. 

Hundreds of negro children yearly, 

By their own parents loved as dearly 

As young Mortara is by his. 

Through Jew or Gentile avarice, 

Are kidnapped for a sacrifice: 

If sons, to Molochs on plantations, 

Tlieir wages, stripes and imprecations, — 

50 



SCHISM AMONG THE METHODISTS. 



If daughters, to domestic stews, 

And all the woe that thence ensues, — 

Oi- sons and daughters both alike 

Disdained and trodden as a tike ; 

For such the fruit which slavery yields 

Alike in domiciles and fields ; 

Yet no remonstrance must be heard— 

Our hearts against their wrongs are barred. 



XI. 



Many who would excite a war a- 
Bout this urchin Jew Mortara, 
Would strangle freemen for a vote 
Tending a rival to promote 
To any office, pension, power 
Which law and justice would secure, 
Or fitness designate to be 
The meed of honest men and free. 
Thousands on thousands of those knaves 
Who most abuse their wretched slaves, 
Who laugh at liberty and creeds 
In full-blood negroes, or half-breeds. 
Viewing all such as merely chattel. 
In no whit better than their cattle, 
Are found the loudest freedom boasters 
In all those anti-Popery musters ! 
*' Our land of liberty and light 
No longer from the cursed blight 
Of Jesuits, demagogues, and Popes 
Shall suffer ; help them all the ropes, 
The hands, the hearts, the lives, the hopes 
Of breeders, fillibusters, pirates : 
Renouncing all that now evirates, 
51 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



(Except four millions of our niggers, 
Domestic choppers, reapers, diggers, 
And inquilines an equal number,* 
Whom natives view as so much lumber), 
Renouncing all that now evirates, 
— We still recite — the speech of pirates, 
Our laws, our creeds, our constitutions, 
Our homes, our altars, institutions, 
No longer from the cursed blight, 
The clouds, the darkness, and the night 
Of Rome shall suffer ! God Almighty ! 
By Thee we swear ! look down in pity !"f 

* Oivis Inquili7ius. — Livij. 

+ In that piece of Know-Notliing Rodomontade called Stanhope Burleigh, or 
The Jesuits in our Homes, is an engraving by Orr, which represents the hero of the 
tale (Stanliopc himself) as the type of a handsome South-Western man, with a flash 
vest and cravat, a faultless figure, gentlemanly features, an Indian hunting shirt, 
tight, very tiglit pants, and vcliement gestures, powerfully aided by his hat grasped 
fiercely in his left liand and lifted to his car. His eye — it does not appear that he 
has more than one — is in a fine frenzy rolling. His liair, though somewhat dis- 
heveled, is not sufJiciently wild or excrcmcntitious for a man in sucli a towering 
rage. He should be painted, as an Irish critic once observed of a person in a situa- 
tion somcwliat similar, more " lilce the devil in a higli wind ;" for which a pair of 
feet, rather cloven, whicli he has, and a swallow-tailed coat, which he has not, would 
have admirably litted him. 

His oath, a more terrible one by far than that of Lars Porsena of Clusium, is 
recorded in the following most original strain : Almighty God ! witness me ! for I 
swear in tliy i)resence, and by my lost and murdered Genevra, that my heart and 
my hands, my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor, arc freely oflcred a sacrifice to 
my country. Tliis land of light, truth, and liberty, shall suffer under the blighting 
curse of demagogues, Jesuitism, and foreign influence, no longer ! Be thou my 
helper ! Mark the sequel, gentle reader, of tliis wonderful adjuration. The cold 
gray twiliglit liad now brought in the dawning of a day wliich was to save the repub- 
lic of Washington. 

Here again the engraver is at his work with a figure of Washington, the father of 
his country, holding a sword in his hand, and pointing down behind the wings of a 
spread eagle towards the Constitution of the U. S., from which a huge serpent is 
rising in deadly struggle with the eagle, whose talons are fastened on the serpent's 
neck, and his Ijcak in close pro.ximity with the bifid or trilid tongue and glaring 
eyes of that venomous monster. It does not appear tliat the sword has pierced the 
beast, or tliat the tivlons of the eagle are so fixed u^jon his neck as to preclude the 
possibility of a fatal bite. 

We had for tlic first time finished the perusal of the tremendous oath referred to, 
when a newspaper reached us which told of the preaching of Father Somebody, a 



SCHISM AMONG THE METHODISTS. 



UNITARIANS. 

XII. 

To Unitarian citizens are due, 
"With justice, truth, humanity in view. 
Our fervid praise ; behold their Channing's name, 
And Adams, hallowed in the roll of fame. 
And Emerson, with varied learning fraught, 
A fount of wisdom and a mine of thought. 
Of genius, worth, and wit a golden pledge, 
For Gordian knots a scymiter and sledge ; 
And Burritt, guardian of a well profound, 
A key to open, and a line to sound, 
Alike prepared to measure earth and sky, 
A comet's tail, the palpus of a fly ;* 
Pierrepont and Phillips, Garrison and Hall, 
Men fearless, frank, unbiassed, liberal. 
Admiring nations view the glorious goal 
To which they press in rivalry of soul, 
Untrammelled or by favor or by fear, 
They view the prize and see the garland near. 
AVith Clarkson, Buxton, Wilberforce they strive 
The yokes to break, the manacles to rive. 
The yokes and manacles that bind a slave. 
And hopeless thraldom on the spirit grave. 
Shall Webster, Clay — their equal in renown 
As statesman, writer, orator — Calhoun 
Thus brightly to posterity go down ? 

Romish priest in full canonicals, in one of the Chambers of Congress. So much for 
the Know-Nothing oath of Stanhope Burleigh. 

The sole office of this Know-Nothing eagle seems to be to strangle and lacerate 
all poor foreigners who seek protection under its wings. What if it had so treated 
the fathers of those Know-Nothings, or some elder or younger brothers of their 
families. Merciful eagle ! Coiwertwgr, not to/w'o^erf, but to dedroy ! 

* See Geography of the Heavens, and other works by E. B. 



53 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



Descend they may with perishing renown. 

And why ? Because they were not Freedom's friends. 

But shaped by tortuous policy their ends. 

Instead of nobly putting forth their might 

As able advocates of truth and right, 

They labored on with ceaseless might and main, 

To forge the collar and to bind the chain 

On Slavery's neck — a sinking, damning curse ! 

In crime's black cataiogue, what sin is worse ? 

CASSIUS M. CLAY. 

XIII. 

Who first of Roman warriors hight 
Was Coriolanus ; scarce in fight 
Has more renown than gallant Clay, 
The hero of our humble lay ; 
Or was to woman's fondest feelings 
More true in all the heart's revealings. 

XIV. 

Rome's warrior, urged by pride and wrath, 

In evil hour forsook the path 

Of duty ; but nor fear, nor blame, 

Nor hate, nor interest, nor shame, 

Nor passion, prejudice, nor love. 

Could Clay to honor recreant prove ; 

Nor heaving depths, nor lowering skies. 

Nor maddening crowds, nor threatening cries, 

Nor all the arts or powers of hell 

In Freedom's fight his spirit quell. 

XV. 

Proud to the proud, but to the lowly. 
By fortune's frowns made melancholy, 

54 



SCHISM AMONG THE METHODISTS. 



None ever wore a kinder face, 
Or rendered favors with more grace, 
Or with more courtesy received. 
Or with more sympathy relieved. 

XVI. 

Such is the Cassius of our time, 
So gallant, just, humane, sublime. 
With figure cast in classic mould. 
And soul of energies untold. 
A Shakspeare's genius should set forth 
His matchless chivalry and worth ; 
Or Garrick, skilled with magic art 
To show the spirit and the heart. 
The gate, the mien, the eagle eye. 
The impress of true majesty. 



XVII. 

A Roman lady could rejoice. 

And thank the Gods with heart and voice, 

That, though great Scipio's daughter, she 

Preferred the rank and dignity 

Of that scarce less illustrious name. 

The Gracchi's mother, and the fame 

For wisdom, eloquence, and might 

With which they battled for the right ; 

As Tribunes faithful to the cause 

Of Roman citizens and laws — 

Yea, battled, conquered, bled, and died 

To curb the insolence and pride 

Of fierce patricians, leagued to be 

The enemies of liberty. 



55 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



xyiil. 
But nobler still the task to break 
The captive exile's bonds, and wake 
The spirit to the glorious hope, 
The height, the breadth, the length, tUe scope 
Of freedom's longings, and the strife 
For all worth fighting for in life. 
This Clay has done: Cornelia's brother, 
Cornelia's sons — yea, she, their mother, 
To Clay, the father, mother, son, 
Must yield the palm by merit won. 



xix. 

Oh ! Henry, when thy name shall cease. 
His will continue to increase 
In cloudless splendor, more and more 
Each year and century than before. 
" Honor shall come, a pilgrim gray,* 
To bless the turf that wraps that clay, 
And freedom shall awhile repair 
To dwell a weeping hermit there," 
Thence rising spread her eagle wing. 
And o'er the globe her aegis fling. 



XX. 

And such a man is found in Chase, 

Whom nor the love of power nor place, 

Nor physical nor moral force. 

Could turn a moment from his course — 

That royal road of chivalry. 

Eternal war on Slavery ! 

* Collins. 
56 



LINES ADDRESSED TO THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 



LINES ADDRESSED TO THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 

RURAL SCENES, LIBERTY, RACHEL BARKER, LOUISA, LITTLE RACHEL OF 

POUGHKEEPSIE. 

Friends of mankind, thrice hail ! most blameless men, 

Who hold the faith of Barclay and of Penn, 

With hope and love instinct, and quiet life, 

While all around are bitterness and strife. 

In moral truth and philosophic worth, 

Has ever faith more goodly fruit brought forth ? 

From frugal cheer deriving vigorous health. 

From honest toil or competence or wealth, 

Not prone to squander ever-precious time 

In aught that leads to vanity or crime. 

Though calm, resolved, though gentle, firm, and true 

To help a slave, a tyrant to eschew. 

Not ours the bootless purpose to declaim 
Against your tenets, teaching to condemn 
Stoles, rochets, bands, and surplices, and gowns, 
Cowls croziers, sceptres, truncheons, triple crowns. 
Pulpits, and feasts, and fasts, and funeral knells. 
As heathen rites, or Papalistic spells ; 
Suffice it with the oracles of God, 
Your faith is based on Christ's atoning blood. 

That bond and freemen may alike rejoice, 
Be honest Lincoln now your willing choice — 
Lincoln himself a friend, or more than friend — 
The wrong to right, the rightful to defend ; 
57 



BURDEN OP THE SOUTH. 



To keep the heritage, which Freedom gave 
To freemen s sons, untrodden by a slave ; 
Our Union's flag with honor to transmit, 
To add new stars, and lost ones reunite ; 
Studious our every blessing to increase, 
The last — not least — a free and truthful press. 
Free trade, free homesteads, freedom of debate 
On all the high concerns which agitate 
The human heart, and lift the soul on high 
To peace and hope and immortality. 

Where erst the wolf and panther prowled for prey, 
And murderous Indians close in ambush lay, 
Your lives of peaceful industry unfold, 
Saturnian scenes, or purer age of gold ; 
From hill to hill, extending far and near, 
Jlark the shrill clarion of the mountaineer, 
The hounds' full chorus, and the hunter's cries, 
The whizzing missile, echo's quick replies ; 
Or, as a comet sweeping o'er the plains, 
The shrieks and thundering of the passing trains ; 
And hark ! the clamor of the neighboring mill, 
The hoarse, loud cataract, and the whispering rill. 
The teamster's lash, as o'er his laggard yokes % 

He plies his whip in well dissembled strokes, 
The milk-maid's carol, and the ploughman's song 
— Some simple ditty in their native tongue, 
First heard, mayhap, from some enamoured swain, 
Or on the Tweed, the Shannon, or the Rhine — 
All in discordant concord, high, deep-toned. 
Harsh, murmuring, shrill, in echoing strains rebound, 
Clang, vibrate, jar, or mutter o'er the ground. 
Those fleecy flocks, those numerous herds behold. 
Or by the stream, the meadow-land, or wold, 
58 



LINES ADDRESSED TO THE SOCIETY OP FRIENDS. 

See vineyards, orchards, gardens, waving corn 
In dewy fragrance gr«et the rising morn, 
And, over all, contentment from above, 
With social peace, and joy, and gentle love. 

Yet, not the fruits which ripen o'er the scene, 

Nor hills nor valleys robed in living green. 

Nor all the songsters of the neighboring grove, 

Nor all the cooing murmurs of the dove, 

Nor herds, nor flocks, nor breeze, nor sparkling stream, 

Nor aught of bliss Arcadian poets dream, 

Not Herraon's top, nor Sharon's roseate bowers. 

Nor Carmel's height, nor Lebanon'sifair towers, 

Nor all of Eden in sweet Wyoming, 

Ere Outalissi, charged with Julia's ring,* 

To Albert took that token, and the child 

To him entrusted — " pilgrim of the wild " 

Now singing to the boy his parting song, 

Who slept on Albert's couch, nor heard his friendly tongue 

Not these more dear, more welcome to the heart, 
Nor yet the march of Commerce, Science, Art, 
Than is that Freedom which you bravely claim 
For all mankind, in substance as in name — ■ 
Freedom of conscience, Nature's sacred gift. 
Of which no mortal justly is bereft, 
Or ever can be without obvious wrong, 
Provided he professes to belong 
To one Almighty, Just, Eternal God, 
Creator, Ruler, Lord, and Sovereign Good ; 
Nor has your freedom ever given cause 
To laxness or of discipline or laws ; 

* Campbell's Gertrude of 'Wjoming. Part the First. 
59 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



Once owning slaves, you looked to set them free, 
On all enjoining peace and amity. 

Sweet Rachael Barker ! to thy name we owe 
Freedom, alike from bondage and from woe, 
For poor Louise ; thrice happy was the day 
When first we saw thy cloak of sober gray, 
Thy winsome bonnet, and thy dainty feet 
In fitting shoon — how simple, yet how neat ! 
Thy faultless figure too, thy lovely face. 
Both living types of innocence and grace ; 
Thy lily hands, thy heaving breasts, thy sighs, 
The tears of pity in thy dove-like eyes ; 
That glossy hair disparted on thy brow. 
Those ruby lips, the dimples which bestow 
A modest radiance o'er thy rosy cheek. 
Where peace and love a blissful union seek — 
Such bliss was our's, when from thy pearly teeth. 
We heard thy words, inhaled thine olive breath.* 

Yes, gentle maid, to memory ever dear, 

Meek, comely, prudent, generous, and sincere, 

Thy looks how kind — how bland, how more than mild 

Thy words of comfort to that woe-worn child: 

"Tell me, Louisa, tell me, do, I pray. 

Why dost thou weep, child I tell me that I may 

Thy pains assuage, allay thy present griet^ 

Or hope in future to impart relief." 

" Young mistress, save me from those brutal blows. 
These bleeding wounds his cruelties disclose," • 

The girl replied. " Oh ! buy me ; who but thee 
Will dare to help me in this misery ?" 

* The Sweet Flowering Olive, as we have seen it in Louisiana, seems to combine 
the fragrance of the Yellow Jessamine, Mignionette, and Magnolia. 

60 



SONG. 



" Most horrid system," Rachael sobbed aloud ; 

" Who shall arrest those streams of human blood 

Poured out in anger by a brother's hand, 

To stain, pollute, and desecrate our land ? 

Which now, with mouth wide open to God's throne. 

The foul libation grimly swallows down. 

Invoking vengeance on the murderer's head — " 

She ceased, nor finished what she had to say ; 

That sightless eye-ball would not brook delay. 

She then resumed : " My brother will this hour 

For me, poor child, thy liberty procure. 

Thy master, doubtless, will advantage take 

Of our good feelings, and a bargain make 

On such conditions as he hopes to see 

Rejected now ; but leave thou that to me." 

The bargain made, Louisa, free as air, 

Is soon transferred to Joshua Barker's care. 

Safe in New York, she thinks of Southern slaves, 

And oft the ransom of her mother craves. 

What more the friends have done, or yet may do. 

If not in Speedy see chronicled in Stowe* 



SONG. 

LITTLE RACHAEL OF POUGHKEEPSIE. 

Our heroine is not the lady who lectured some years ago in Louisiana and the 
Carolinas, but another of nearly the same name, now residing, we learn, not one 
hundred miles from Poughkeepsie. 

What time the violet appears 
Our Muse would fain indite a sonnet, 

On little Rachael's blushing ears. 
Half seen beneath that winsome bonnet ; 

But soon the dew-drops on her cheek, 

* Query — Mrs. H. B. Stowe. 
61 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



Her bosom's swell, her heart's emotion, 
Would seem more loudly to bespeak 
A parent's care, than bard's devotion. 

Caps, slippers, collars, glossy silks 
Derive from Rachael some divineness ; 

But what so precious as the milk 
Of Rachael's all-subduing kindness ! 

In every throb her heart records, 
In every pulse of Christian feeling 

For poor Louise, no power of words 
Can half express that heart's revealings. 

Whate'er among the Grecian Isles 
The Rhodian artist most impresses. 

In features, forms, and magic smiles, 
Must yield to Rachael's artless graces. 

A tranquil joy is her's — a mind, 
In every look, divinely glowing, 

Than wit or genius more refined, 
With Mercy's sweetest balm o'erflowing. 

Ah ! nothing reck'st thou, Rachael ! who, 
In humble strains, invokes thy pleading, 

For Milly and poor Oderick now 
As for Louise once interceding. 

Did Bamfield, Moore, Carew* succeed 
Among our friends to aid the gypsey, 

Go thou for slaves, in faith, God speed ! 
Quoth lovely Rachael of Poughkeepsie. 

* B. M. Carew, an eccentric but most benevolent English gentleman, received 
more favor and material aid from the Friends in Pennsylvania (in his eflforts to 
improve the social condition of the Gypsies), than from all other classes of people 
in Europe or America. See his Autobiography. 

62 



RHYMES FOR THE YOUNG. 



RHYMES FOR THE YOUNG. 

A SOUTHEKN FAMILY PICTURE. — TRAGIC DRAMA. 
LITTLE FANNY. 

I. 
Yes, Fanny, thou dear little creature, 

Joy, innocence, beauty, and truth, 
So brighten thine every feature. 

Thou seemest the Goddess of Youth. 

II. 
"With looks so bewitchingly smiling, 

With spirits so blithesome and free. 
With manner so sweetly beguiling. 

Say, who can help thinking of thee ? 

III. 
Go, charmer, and joyously follow 

Thy hoop in its serpentine chase ; 
Good Fred, as he pleases, may holloa. 

While you and old Brush run a race.* 

IV. 

Thy fawn, pretty Billy, is jealous 

That dogs should such fellowship dare, 

While he, standing near, is so zealous 
In all thy amusements to share. 

V. 

He arches his neck, his bells tinkle. 

He stretches his snow-dappled sides, 
His bright eyes with ecstacy twinkle. 
His time for the race he abides. 
* Fred and Brush. The former her brother, the latter her dog. 
63 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



VI. 

Her prison a moment forgetting, 

Poor Poll laughs and screams witli delight 
Then seems as a captive regretting, 

She wants the bless'd freedom of flight. 

VII. 

Close by thy loved pony is feeding, 
And viewing thy frolics askance, 

But like a good horse shows his breeding. 
As taught by thy knight of the lance. 

VIII. 

Thy linnet is warbling its ditty, 

Thy ring-doves are cooing their loves ; 

A chorus so jocund and witty 
Has seldom enlivened the grove. 

ix. 

Thy father, thy sister, thy mother 

Partake of thy pleasures, sweet child ; 

Thy servants, thy friends — and another. 
Of care by thy pastimes beguiled. 

X. 

The lambkins are sporting around them, 
The swallows are wheeling their flight. 

The mocking-bird tries to confound them — 
He echoes the shriek of the kite. 

XI. 

Chameleons are glancing in sunshine, 

And Cicadae bound as perdue ; 
And chaliced like prisms in noonshine, 

The humming-bird revels in dew, 
64 



EHTMES FOR THE YOUNG. 



XII. 

See gold-fish disporting in fountains, 
With varying motion and size, 

x\s erst in their lake on the mountains 
The raptured beholder surprise — 

XIII. 

Now wheeling in cycles elliptic, 
Now trolling in frolicsome play. 

Now seeking in crevices cryptic 
To shut out the beams of the day. 

XIV. 

The light-footed squirrels are leaping 
And skipping from bower to bower ; 

Or archly and timidly peeping, 
They chatter or frolic or cower. 

XV. 

And locusts unnumbered, in chorus, 
And songsters from neighboring trees, 

And bull-frogs, with voices sonorous, 
All chime with the murmur of bees. 

XVI. 

And swans from their home in yon island 
Superbly survey their domain ; 

And loud-cawinof rooks from the hishland 
Rejoice, with their breasts full of grain. 

XVII. 

The meadow which slopes to the inlet, 
The willow-moss, cypress, and vines, 

And live oak and orange, are sunlit, 
And eglantines, hollies, and pines. 

65 . 



BURDEN OP THE SOUTH. 



The violet, crocus, and daisy, 
The rose-bud, the pink, daffodil, 

Instructing the proud and the lazy. 
Enamel the valley and hill, 

XIX. 

And inignionettes, wall-flowers, sweet briars 
Are here — not to torture the brow, 

With lilies and roses as tiars, 
By emperors worn ere now, 

XX. 

And olives, sweet jessamines, dairies, 
Magnolias, breathing of kine — 

Meet luncheon for legions of fairies, 
On smell of new hay wont to dine. 

XXI. 

Cascades from the neighboring gorges. 
And steamers are heard from afar, 

And engines, and clanging of forges 
For new fashioned weapons of war. 

XXII. 

The baying of hounds, and of horses 
The neighings — the hunter's shrill horn. 

And chanticleer's screaming discourses, 
Enliven the eve as the morn. 

XXIII. 

Nor wanting for home play are billiards, 
Chess, angling, or shady retreats. 

Nor books for the studious, nor galliards, 
Nor sherbets for tropical heats. 

66 



RHYMES FOR THE YOUNG. 



XXIV. 

A thousand times dearer than any 
Loved object in nature or art, 

Wast thou, our divine little Fanny, 
The joy and delight of our heart. 

XXV. 

Now changes the scene — as one bleeding 
And wailing sinks down at thy feet, 

And fugitives, piteously pleading, 
Thy loved intercession entreat. 

xxvi. 
Thy father's o'erseer in his fury 

His dogs on their tracks did unleash, 
And urged them to chase and to worry, 

To rend and to mangle their flesh. 

XXVII. 

Thou weepest, my dear little maiden ! 

The color has fled from thy cheek ; 
Thy torments, poor Sally ! so sadden 

Her heart, she refuses to speak. 

XXVIII. 

Ah me ! she replied, I am dying ; 

Oh God ! make the black people free ! 
My spirit, Father ! is flying — 

Its refuge is only in thee ! 

XXIX. 

Farewell, dearest child ! and forever — 
Our strenuous efi'orts shall show 

How strong our resolves are to sever 
The fetters of bondage and woe ! 

67 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



LINES TO MARY,* 

THE SISTER OF FANNY. 
I. 

Mary ! ■when I saw thee last, 

Who thought thy bloom would fade so fast ? 

Thy lovely features thus o'ercast 

With sickness and with sorrow? 
And are those matchless graces gone, 
Which all enraptured gazed upon, 
Like roses which this morn have blown 

To wither ere the morrow ? 



Mary, those eyes will glow once more 
With magic lustre as before. 
And health and happiness restore 

Thine every charm and grace : 
'Tis thus the glorious Queen of Night, 
From darkest shades to cloudless light 
Emerged, in golden livery dight, 

Her cycle loves to trace. 



Mary, dry up those scalding tears, 
Dispel those gloomy doubts and fears. 
Still hope for happy days and years, 
To festive joys unbend thee ; 



* Mary having returned from school soon after the death of Fanny, was so 
affected by that event that doubts were entertained of her recovery. She is sup- 
posed to be addressed as above in the presence of her mother, who consequently 
becomes one of the dramatis personee. 

63 



LINES TO MARY. 



Nor then forget the friends who now 
Lament the change that marks thy brow, 
When Fortune, with a lowly bow, 
And all her train attend thee. 

IV. 

You bid me dry these flowing tears, 
Dispel those gloomy doubts and fears. 
Think hopefully of future years. 

To cheerfulness unbend me. 
Ah me ! would not my sister's shade, 
And Sally's (our poor murdered maid). 
Should aught but grief my heart invade. 

Arise and reprehend me ? 

V. 

How could such nameless horrors be, 

And I in social gayety 

Find aught but painful memory ? 

No, sister, never, never ! 
To festive scenes they call in vain ; 
I ne'er shall seek their joys again — 
Till slaves their liberty obtain, 

Till we their bonds dissever. 

VI. 

Mother, I always thought it wrong 
That we, because we are more strong, 
Should negroes tear with whip and thong. 

And worry them with hounds.* 
I ever shall this wrong oppose, 
The more that now I see the woes. 
And feel those agonizing blows 
From Sally's ghastly wounds. 

* See the notes at the end of these rhymes. 
C9 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



VII. 

What else, my child, but scenes of woe 
From monstrous crimes and errors flow ? 
Who dares the seeds of slavery sow, 

Like Pharaoh reaps in anguish. 
Better to work for daily bread, 
Better be like your sister — dead, 
Than thus be kept in constant dread, 

In misery to languish 1 

VIII. 

Your father, dearest, thinks with me, 
Admits the ills of slavery, 
But says that full indemnity 

Must hei-ald manumission. 
A legal evil so entailed, 
Howe'or detested and bewailed, 
Cannot and will not be repealed 

Except on that condition. 

"We knew a few years since, at the South, a wretch who kept "negro-dogs" 
{i. e. blood-hounds), and made it quite a profitable business to tempt slaves to run 
away from their owners, that he miglit obtain the reward offered for their capture, 
which, of course, with the aid of those dogs, and his knowledge of the retreats 
of his victims, was very easily effected. The spoils were divided with his asso- 
ciates. When the trick was discovered, he was mercilessly lynched, and departed 
from the parish in which he had exercised his calling. 

This man was exceedingly urgent upon a neighbor of S. E.., intending a visit to 
Scotland, to procure for liim, at any price, a half-dozen Buccleugh, or perhaps Argjde 
beagles, which he tliought he could train to the work of blood-hounds. Ho was 
so crest-fallen, however, after his "misfortune," as he naively called it, that ho 
never repeated his request. 

"We believe it was beyond the descriptive powers of poor Hugh Miller (and who 
in description ever equalled him f) to paint in words the physique of that miscreant 
slave-catcher. He was of medium height, rather short and thick-set, wore some- 
times a slouched hat, sometimes a I'oxy, battered, high-crowned silk hat, white 
round the rim. The rest of his outer clothing was of Hoosier woolen homespun, 
of the inevitable brown color, half-threadbare. His hair, hands, face, and neck 
were red, strong, thick, and dirty. His eyes — Ye Gods I what a pair I — looked at 
one and the same time to all points of the compass, and with such marvellous 

70 



LINES TO MART. 



nictitating and contractile powers as we never saw equalled or approached in the 
foulest night-bird, or the most ravenous and predaceous of beasts and winged 
creatures. He looked, by turns, shy, servile, familiar, and murderous. The 
loathing and contempt with which he was universally regarded, even in a slave- 
country, seemed to have brought ever uppermost in his thoughts the pious wish 
of Caligula. 

"We saw him once, on the strength of an old job — done for pay — for the benefit 
of a Lieutenant-Governor of Louisiana, approach that functionary with a show of 
audacious and jaunty familiarity ; but the loolc and manner of the Governor con- 
vinced him that base spies, traitors, and hangmen, must never presume upon an 
equality with their employers. He was paid for his services, such as they were, 
and there ended the acquaintance. 

There is, at this moment, in the immediate neighborhood of S. R., another who 
follows (with better success so far) this respectable calling. His dogs do not look 
very formidable, embracing, as they do. Goldsmith's varieties — " mongrel, puppy, 
whelp, and houud, and curs of low degree ;" but he boasts greatly of their sagacity 
and prowess. They scorn to take the nux vomica, or any other pill or preparation, 
from the hands of a nigger. One of them, he afBrms, so seizes upon a hand armed 
with a knife to destroy him as to prevent the possibility of its use. A slave only, 
we imagine, could fail to disable such vermin. A good Sharpe's rifle or two, in 
ordinary hands, would soon dispose of the whole pack. It was probably for some 
such purpose that Mr. Beecher recommended the Sharpe. If so, we say, " Ditto 
to Mr. Beecher!" 

There are, in the South, more ladies than is generally Imagined who, like Mary's 
mother, reprobate slavery. They alone have the courage to denounce it in the 
family circle, and among their neighbors. They know its fkditsI Nor are 
there wanting a few of them who, before strangers and visitors, express, on fitting 
occasions, their sentiments on those fruits. We have heard more than one lady, 
in defiance of much telegraphic frowning, speak admiringly of Mr. Beecher, Mrs. 
Stowe, G. Smith, H. Greeley, Messrs. Seward, Sumner, the lovely Lady Sutherland, 
and other advocates of the abolition of slavery. 

Mary's parents, and nearly all owners of slaves, nay, most of our most zealous 
abolitionists, are at issue on this point with Mr. Helper, the author of " The Im- 
pending Crisis," the best anti-slavery book ever published in this or any other 
country. Mr. H. would have slaves emancipated and deported at the sole expense 
of their owners. There can be no doubt whatever of tlie justice of this course; 
but on the score of its practicabihty we have our misgivings. 

In the Compendium of " The Impending Crisis" (pp. 86, 87, &c.), are some mem- 
orable passages on this subject. We can only instance one or two, or perhaps 
three or four, paragraphs: 

" To turn the slaves away from their present homes — away from all the property 
and means of support which their labor has maiuly produced, would be unpardon- 
ably cruel, exceedingly unjust. Still more cruel and unjust would it be, however, 
to the non-slaveholding whites, no less than to the negroes, to grant further tole- 



71 



BURDEiT OF THE SOUTH. 



ration to the existence of slavery. In any event — come what will, transpire what 
may — the system must be abolished. The evils, if any, which are to result from 
abolition, cannot, by any manner of means, be half as great as the evils which 
are certain to overtake us in case of its continuance. The perpetuation of slavery 
is the climax of iniquity. 

" Considered in connection with the righteous claim of wages for services which 
the negroes might bring against their masters, . . . the slaveholders would not 
only be stripped of every dollar, but they would become in law, as they are in 
reality, the hopeless debtors of the myriads of imfortunate slaves, white and 
black, who are now cringing and fawning and festering around them." 

Again : '' Let us, by an equitable system of legislation, . . . compel the slave- 
holders to do something like justice to their negroes, by giving each and every one 
of them sixty dollars in current money: then let us charter all the ocean steamers, 
packets, and clipper-ships that can be had on reasonable terms, and keep them 
constantly plying between the ports of America and Africa, until all the slaves 
who are here held in bondage shall enjoy freedom in the land of their fathers." 

Mr. Helper is a young man, and in his personal appearance remarkable. 
His height is, we believe, six feet, one inch and a half or two inches. His figure 
is excellent; not overburdened with flesh, but straight, lithe, graceful, and vigor- 
ous. His weight does not probably exceed one hundred and seventy pounds. His 
hair — like his beard, strong, thick, and somewhat bushy — is black as a raven's 
wing. His complexion — a southern one — is such as usually belongs to such hair. 
"We will not say of his eye (he is blessed with a pair) that it is Uke Holbein's, as 
described by Allen Cunningham — "an eye not likely to endure contradiction;" 
but most assuredly we can and do say that it is an eye not calculated to invite 
aggression — for, verily, tlie aggressor will do well to beware I He is singularly 
temperate in all his habits — mild, brave, courteous, generous, pacific, and deter- 
mined to the last degree. In him, the Shakspearian motto of Ids work is no 
empty boast. 

He doubtless feels bitterly his exile and alienation from his native State ; and 
still more so, probably, the timid counsels of his friends and advisers, and the 
stolid indifference with which so many now regard the great struggle now going 
on between slavery and freedom. 

Of Professor Hedrick and Mr. Underwood, Mr. Helper remarks, that the former 
was a short while since banished from his home in Virginia, and the latter (the 
accomplished Hedrick) driven from his College professorship in North Carolina, 
.... ostracised by the despotic slave power, and compelled to seek a refuge 
from its vengeance in States where the principles of Freedom are better understood. 

Kossuth comes among us from Hungary, as a great orator and patriot, and is 
all but worshipped ; though, like those of other great popular idols, his triumphs 
were of short duration. But here are men of talents, of virtue, and of patriotism, 
who, with no hope of reward in this hfe save the testimony of a good conscience, 
have sacrificed every thing to their principles, in behalf of a poor, degraded, help- 
less, enslaved race of men, yet they daily walk the streets of Xew York without 

72 

_-_ . . . . . I 



SENATOR SEWARD. 



either the Outos Ekeinos of the multitude, or any one caring a straw whether they 
have a sufSeiency of the commonest necessaries of daily subsistence I 

In reference to pecuniary indemnity as a sine qua non to the manumission of 
slaves, S. R. entirely concurs in the views of the parents of the children made 
the subject of the above rhymes. To those views he has given fuU expression 
toward the conclusion of some preceding rhymes on Earth, Livingstone, and the 
Kings of Commerce. 

Mr. Helper has, within the last two or three months, acquired a most enviable 
celebrity. His work is most vehemently denounced, and the indorsement of its 
principles deemed by the pro-slavery faction in Congress a cause sufficient for ex- 
clusion from the Speakership of the House. What a comment upon our boasted 
freedom ! It affords, however, the highest possible evidence of the sterling merit 
of the work. In short, its statistics are overwhelming — its reasoning unanswer- 
able. . Mine lachrymce. What there is libellous or seditious in it, only a blind and 
bitter partisan can discover. Mr. H. errs, if at all, in good company — with 
Brougham, Macaulay, Humboldt ; with Jeflerson, Washington, and Clay ; " with 
poets, heroes, statesmen, sages of all nations, ancient and modern. If all these 
are wrong, then we are wrong. On the other hand, however, if they arc right, 
we are right, for, in effect, we only repeat and endeavor to enforce their precepts." 
— Impending Crisis, p. 170. 



RHYMES 



ADDRESSED TO A FEW STATESMEN, AND OTHER DISTINGUISHED PERSONS, 
IN GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. 

SENATOR SEWARD. 

Where, Seward, shall we find among statesmen a mind 

As thine so unflinching and brave ? 
So full of pure zeal for the public weal. 

So kind and so good to tlie slave ? 
Deep, clear, comprehensive, nor yet undimensive. 

Thy knowledge, experience, and skill ; 
Eschewing retortion, give all things proportion 

Befitting their worth and thy will. 
Thy bitterest foes are constrained to depose 

That, throughout the most fiery debate, 

73 



BURDEiT OF THE SOUTH. 



Thou wouldst not a jot, and perhaps thou couldst not, 

Of the high-bred patrician abate. 
Proceed ! thy example will serve for a sample 

Of Senators worthy the name, ' 

In a nation like ours, unsurpassed in its powers, 

Its eloquence, glory, and fame ! 

LORD BR0UGHA.5I.— BARON HUMBOLDT.— LORD PALMBRSTON, ETC. 

I. 
Great Brougham and Humboldt, twin thunder and sunhult, 

Continue as ever to be, 
And thou, my Lord John,* to thy lasting renown, 

The friend of the slave and the free. 
Thou, Pahnerston, follow, with brow of Apollo, 

Thy daring, thy knowledge, thy skill, 
Thy generous zeal for poor Africa's weal. 

Thy genius, the force of thy will ; 
Thy promptness in action, thy tact amidst faction 

To pilot the vessel of State, 
Amidst tempests and waves, to a harbor that saves 

From the depths of political hate. 
To these we refer, they most loudly declare 

The worth which so many can feel, 
And give to thy name, in the Temple of Fame, 

A place between Chatham and Peel. 

II. 

We, Malmsbury ! thee would invoke in our plea. 

And Clarendon, ever the same. 
And Derby and Althorpe, Bi'ight, Cobden, and Calthorpe, 

And Wilberforce, foremost in fame ! 
And loveliest Queen ! though an ocean between 
TJs and thee roll the bsd of its waves 
"•'• I.o d John Russell. 
74 



BRITISH STATESMEN, ETC. 



Is a means iu thy hands to unloosen the bands 
Of our down-trodden x\lrican slaves. 

III. 

Ye floods, lift your voice ! hills and mountains rejoice! 

Ye angels, descend upon earth ! 
Men, men! catch the sound, and re-echo around — 

The song of a second new birth ! 
All join in our chorus, with voices sonorous ; 

Oh ! take and prolong it again, 
Till earth, sea, and sky, and the stars shout for joy, 
And the welkin repeats the loud strain : 
Soli sit gloria 
Deo — memoria 
Pacis, Victoria I 
Nobis — amen. 
This, this be the glory of song aud of story, 

Great Qaeen, to distinguish thee now ; 
Electrical might, and its pencils of light, 
Be the rays that encircle thy brow. 

IV. 

To thee, Cyrus Field, was the problem revealed, 

That, bridging the seas with a chain, 
Our tlioughts may take wing in the lightning, and bring 

(As the current or life through the brain) 
All nations from far, wheresoever they are, 

Of one blood, who inherit our globe, 
To union and peace, and fraternal embrace, 

In sympathy's limitless robe. 
Good Lincoln, thy name in the annals of fame 

Is linked with the light of our sphere. 
For thine is the glory, to Whig and to Tory, 

To herald the jubilee year, 
75 



BURDEN OP THE SOUTH. 



When distance and space, and old time in its race, 

Are spanned by one cosmical clieer. 
Thus echo rejoices, with millions of voices, 

Over continent, island, and sea. 
Thro' the poles, thro' the line, thro' the depths of the mine, 

Alike to the slave and the free. 
The news to impart, that America's heart 

Throbs, Britain, in concert with thee ! 

V. 

Hail, Parker and Greeley, Smith, Phillips, and Silli- 

Man, Beecher and Sumner and Chase ! 
And good Harriet Stowe, to whose genius we owe 

Uncle Tom, the delight of his race !* 
To thee, noble Duchess ! we send, as in purchase 

Of pardon for sins in past years,f 
O'er land and o'er ocean, our heartfelt emotions 

In loud international cheers. 
Hail, Helper ! well named, with thy treatise proclaimed 

To second our honest endeavor,^ 
The curse to remove, and the problem resolve 

Which threatens our Union to sever. 
The friend of the slave must be constant and brave ; 

Yet courage most glowing and innate. 
With truth for his shield, failed Sumner a field 

In the lists of our national Senate. 
Blows seldom recoil in a manner to foil 

A brutal assassin aggressor ;§ 

* Uncle Tom was the Titus of his race — Delicia generis humani. The crown 
within his grasp is more precious than the purple and diadem of the Caesars. 

f Duchess of Sutlierland. 

X H. R. Helper, the author of the Impending Crisis. 

§ Mr. Helper remarks (p. 15, Compendium): "That we shall encounter opposi- 
tion we consider as certain ; perhaps we may be even subjected to insult and 
violence But we shall shrink from no responsibility, and do nothing unbe- 

7C^ 



^ 



TO THE DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND. 



He bides his own time to be cautious in crime, 
Avoiding the risks of a cessor. 

VI. 

Hail ! all who would aid in suppressing a trade 

Which plunges whole nations in tears — 
At home and abroad both a curse and a rod, 

A source of perpetual fears. 
Hail ! England's great Queen ! and good Lincoln amain ! 

Be Justice and Mercy and Power 
Our guerdons of right, and our pillars of light, 

Our rock and impregnable tower. 

Now praise to the Higliest^ the Mightiest, Nighest, 

The Wisest, Most Holiest, Best ! 
To men of goodwill, his behests who fulfil, 

Be honor and concord and rest ! 



TO HER GRACE, THE DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND. 

I. 
Dauntless proceed ! yea, conquering go 
In Freedom's van, with Beecher, Stowe, 
Most noble lady ! to impart 
The promptings of thine own pure heart 
In Freedom's cause ; thy honored name 
We hail as foremost to proclaim 
The slave a man, his wife a mother, 
Both lowly, yet a sister, brother. 

coming a man. We know how to repel indignity, and, if assaulted, shall not fail 
to make the blow recoil upon the aggressor's head." 

"We believe that Mr. H. — on one occasion, at least, if not more than one, since 
the publication of his work — has had occasion to make good his promise in this 
matter of aggression. 

77 



BURDEX OF THE SOUTH. 



II. 
Has thou not, gracious lady, been 
Of heaven elect to be a queen ? 
Aye, sooth to say, a queen thou art 
In every leal and honest heart. 
Thy coronet, reward for deeds 
Of love and mercy, far exceeds, 
In worth and splendor, all that glows 
In brilliants o'er thy radiant brows. 
Thy sceptre more than regal sway 
Exerts o'er nations far away ; 
Thy virtues^ tutelary powers 
Nor autocrats nor emperors 
In might or majesty approach ; 
Thy fame, without a stain or blotch, 
Nor wrath can wound, nor malice touch; 
Thou art, in short, a queen of queens — 
Queen of our hearts : those aliens 
Who own no other sovereign's might 
In thy supremacy delight ; 
Nay, she, the mightiest in command, 
Reveres the matchless Sutherland ! 
Angelic being ! from thy sight 
Shrink into darkest shades of night 
Whate'er of wickedness or sin 
Or stalks abroad or lurks within ! 

III. 
Of mien majestic, mild, and meek, 

Divinely wrought perfection's mould ; 
When rival graces flush thy cheek, 

Truth, goodness, love, their age of gold 
Confess, and Envy with amaze 
Gives willing tribute to thy praise — 
7S 



TO THE DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND. 



Such, angel of the house of Gower, 
Thy peerless loveliness and power 1 

IV. 

Reader, contemn the heartless lie 
Which would the Sutherland affy 
To persecution and oppression. 
Within the range of her possession. 
Thou, gracious lady, wouldst not have 
Or man or beast a hapless slave ; 
But free, unchained as highland deer, 
Or as those larks, high poised in air, 
That soar above the clouds, and sing 
Their carols to the new-born Spring ; 
Or bird of Jove, with lordly sweep 

Descending o'er Pomona's steep. 

♦ 

V. 

Most noble lady ! so humane ! 
Who causes thee a moment's pain. 
Whose slander would, with baleful wing, 
And malice, with envenomed sting. 
Thy stainless name — 
(Aye! stainless as the virgin snow 
On Dornoch's Firth or Birsa Brough)* 
Thy stainless name, along the path 
Between Cape Sable and Cape Wrath,f 

* Dornoch Firth, in Sutherland. Birsa Brough, on the northwest of Pomona, 
the largest of the Orkney Isles. 

f Cape Sable, the most southern cape in Florida. Cape W)-aih, the northern ex- 
tremity of Sutherland and of Great Britain. 

The Hon. Miss A. A. Murray has amply vindicated the present Duchess of 
Sutherland from any share in tlie ejectment or deportation of the Sutherland 
peasantry. ^ 

79 



BURDEN OP THE SOUTH. 



Assail : or whereso, land or sea, 
Is redolent of Liberty,* 
That bastard liberty which waves 
Its corsair flag o'er captured slaves — 
High on a felon's gibbet swung, 
Let carrion vultures rend his tongue ! 



Yet, sweetest lady, such the price. 
In calumny and prejudice. 
Which all must pay, who strive to see 
The dawn of Freedom's jubilee. 
If now to thee it seemeth hard, 
Have still in view the great reward 
To those who bind the broken heart. 
Who love good tidings to impart ; 
Beauty, for ashes, joy,^or grief, 
The robe of praise, the heart's relief, 
Is theirs to hope in righteousness. 
With everlasting joy and peace ! 



SONG, 

SUPPOSED TO BE WRITTEN BY HER GRACE, THE DUCHESS OF SUTHER- 
LAND, AND SUN& BEFORE A LARGE PARTY OF LADIES OF THE 
SOUTHERN STATES OF THE AMERICAN UNION. 

I. 

Sisters, greeting! we implore you 

Break from slaves their galling chain ! 
Lowly, suppliant thus before you, 

* " Toot! toot!" said a gallant Scot, to whom S. R. had read the passage referred 
to, "Redolent of Liberty, indeed ! A man who would assail the Duchess of Suth- 
erland can be redolent only of Whiskey and Tobacco!" 

80 



SONG. 

Shall we, sisters, plead in vain ? 
Duteous daughters, wives, and mothers 

Are of every cast and shade ; 
We, our fathers, husbands, brothers, 

For the darkest crave your aid. 

II. 
Can you, sisters, in coherence 

With your laws and rules of life, 
Sever children from their parents, 

And the husband from the wife 1 
Think in time, we pray, bethink you, 

What dread woe from bondage springs. 
Feuds domestic, crimes which link you 

With the very worst of kings. 

III. 
Free your slaves / with freedom teach them 

What, in ransom for a soul. 
Heaven has paid; in love beseech them 

Stormy passions to control ; 
Teach them from the living fountain 

Of true wisdom from above. 
As the Saviour on the mountain 

Taught the multitude in love. 

IV. 

In those arts and rights instruct them, 

Which you know and prize so well, 
And in peace and joy conduct them 

Where they can in safety dwell. 
There, like you, through Freedom's blessing, 

From their altars and their home, 
May they, evermore progressing. 

Sow the seeds of life to come. 
81 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



NEW SONG. 

SUPPOSED TO BE SUNG BY THE STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE 
SOUTH, AT CHATTANOOGA. 

I. 

I'll sing a song, a simple song, 

I've heard it in my motherland ; 
'Tis something new, about the U- 

Niversity of Southerland. 
Hurrah ! hurrah ! for motherlands ! 

Hurrah ! hurrah ! for brotherlands ! 
A loosened screw disturbs the U- 

Niversity of Southerland ! 



We'll read the books our sires have read,* 
No other books in Southerland 

Shall e'er be read, in school or bed, 
Than may be read in motherland. 



* The bishops and planters of the Soutli will probably soon build and richly 
endow a University, so-called ; nor can we question they v/ill find men of the 
highest order of talents for its various departments of instruction. "We heartily 
say God-speed to them in the sacred cause of educition — for knowledge is light ; 
but to talk of purifying its channels by suppressing in the literature of the world 
all that touches upon slavery in terms of condemnation, is the height and depth 
and length and breadth of absurdity I 

They will have to begin at the Book of Exodus, the most ancient of all works 
on the abolition of human bondage. We need scarcely assure them that the 
number of " freedom shriekers " in subsequent periods of the history of man- 
kind is far too great to be silenced by the secret machinations or open violence of 
pro-slavery advocates. 

The defecation they talk of by the Index Expurgatorius contemplated will be a 
Ucus a non lucendo. History and poetry and philosophy and religion, divested of 
the love and sentiment of human freedom, would be a dark, seething, overflowing 
coUuvnts of all the worst elements of moral and social evil. Ye Gods 1 what a 
heritage to future generations 1 

82 



TO THE DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND. 



We are not knaves', we shan't be slaves, 

We'll do as men in other lands ; 
We'll cut in twain the cord and chain 

That bind the slave in Southerlands ! 
Hurrah ! hurrah ! for motherlands ! 

Hurrah ! hurrah ! for brotherlands ! 
We'll cut in twain the cord and chain 

That bind the slave in Southerlands ! 

III. 
Let Shakspeare, Cowper, Burns, and Scott, 

Her Grace the Lady Sutherland, 
And Britain's Queen, be ne'er forgot 

By those who love the motherland. 
Hurrah ! hurrah ! for motherlands ! 

Hurrah ! hurrah ! for brotherlands ! 
We'll cut in twain the cord and chain 

That bind the slave in Southerlands ! 

IV. 

To seal the books for which man looks 

For truth in every other land, 
Cailnot be right — 'tis to indict 

The truth itself in Southerland ! 
Hurrah ! hurrah ! for motherlands ! 

For sister and for brotherlands ! 
The slave to free, shall ever be 

Our chief delight in Southerlands ! 



83 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



THE HON. A. A. MURRAY. 

MOST RESPECTFULLY ADDRESSED TO THE HON, A. A, MURRAY TOUCHING 

THE PRO-SLAVERY TENDENCY OF HER BOOK OF TRAVELS 
IN THE UNITED STATES. 

I. 

Daughter of an illustrious line, 
Be it thy privilege to shine, 
In beauty, splendor, wit, at court. 
Whither both wealth and rank resort ; 
Where wisdom, valor, worth reside. 
With courtesy and blameless pride — 
A galaxv of radiant sheen 
Around a good and gracious queen. 

II. 

But hadst thou lived as long as we 
Amidst the ills of slavery, 
Or known as well as Beecher Stowe 
A tithe of its unfathomed woe, 
Wouldst thou thy sovereign have offended, 
In that thou hast a cause defended 
Which she most wisely reprobates ? 
Not only as destroying States 
Politically ; nay, but rather 
Because that evil is the father . 
Of countless wrongs — subverting morals, 
And evermore entailing quarrels 
Upon our country, and a race 
With which, in harmony and peace, 
Our only source of emulation 
Should be to work emancipation 
84 



THE HON. A. A. MURRAY. 



From gyves of body or of mind, 
Alike pernicious to mankind ; 
To spread abroad faitb, ligbt, and truth 
From east to west, from north to south, 
Till sea and land, from shore to shore, 
War's clarion echoes hear no more ! 

III. 
Read, learn, digest, and mark these rhymes ; 
Mark well the pressure of the times ; 
Obey thy good and gracious queen — 
Sorely lamenting thou hast been 
The writer of a class of letters 
Which rank thee with the chief abettors 
Of a base system, by whose vices, 
And shameless, heartless artifices, 
It will thy spirit much have grieved 
To find thy judgment so deceived. 

IV. 

How canst thou know the baleful evil 
Which eats the social heart like weevil 
In cereal heaps — destroying life, 
And evermore fomenting strife 
Between the husband and the wife ? 
The moral Stain, the soul disease, 
The wrath which nothing can appease. 
That which, more cruel than the grave, 
Affects the just man and the knave, 
Thou trow^st not of; nor yet the mental, 
Or natural or accidental. 
Who wont to low propensities 
To yield, and social rites defies, 

85 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



Prone like a beast, appearance saves 
By living in a land of slaves. 
Without or fear or care of censure, 
He may and will his all adventure, 
Subordinate the mind to matter, 
Bitter for sweet, sweet put for bitter ; 
By rampant appetites invaded, 
In heart and mind and soul degraded, 
He makes his will a tyrant'' s law, 
The bond and free alike to awe. 

V. 

Taints physical we cannot treat of, 
Descending so from sire to son ; 
No one can adequately weet of 
That which is sown in flesh and bone ! 
Lady, perhaps before thy birth 
'Twas ours to estimate the worth 
Of all this hideous, monster lie 
Which some call legal slavery! 
We love thy country and thy name. 
And pay just homage to thy fame ; 
And though it is our lot to be 
Unskilled in ways of chivalry, 
Nay, doubtless far beyond the reach 
Of polished life and Attic speech. 
Yet thou wilt not, mayhap, refuse 
The tribute of our Doric muse ; 
For we are not of such a jury 
As would condemn the courtly Murray 
Unheard : her manner, wit reined, 
Her judgment, talents, grasp of mind, 
We honor much, and much desire 
To mark, regard, esteem, admire 

86 



THE HON. A. A. MURRAY, 



The noble lineaments of face, 
The mingled dignity and grace 
Which birth and station oft express, 
And habit, moulding every feature 
In perfect harmony with nature. 
To beauty, conversation, mien, 
Meet for the friend of Britain's queen. 

VI. 

Due honor to thy good intention — 
Yet trust we not ourselves to mention 
The ills that may from writings flow 
On which we fain would praise bestow, 
Those passages except, of course, 
Which better reason make the worse. 

VII. 

Far better thou hadst caught the quartan 
Than dimmed the lustre of thy tartan, 
The black, the blue, the red and green* 
So honored by thy lovely queen. 
'Tis said thy bright and glowing pagef 
Does much injustice to thy badge — 
A badge so famed in Scottish story, 
The badge of Sutherland and Murray — 
The Beallaidh chatti J of Argyle, 

Of Sutherland and Strath-na-var, 
The glory of the highland Gael, 

Of *' Bonnie Murray," and of Mar.§ 

♦ Colors of Sutliorland and Murray. 

f S. R., having seen and read Miss Murray's book, regrets be has no occasion 
to change those lines. 

X Benllaidh-chatti — Butcher's-broom. Ruscm aculeatus. See Scottish Gael. 
§ West of Scotland. 

87 



BURDEN OP THE SOUTH. 



RHYMES. 

Here's freedom to him that wad read, 

Here's freedom to him that wad write ; 
There's nane ever feared that the truth should be heared, 

But they wham the truth would indict. — Burns. 

THE FOLLOWING JEUX d'eSPRIT ARE MOST RESPECTFULLY ADDRESSED 

TO THE 

BISHOPS OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 

OF THE SOUTH AND SOUTHWEST, 
BY THEIR FRIEND, SKNNOIA RUBEK. 

I. 

Bishop Polk ! Bishop Polk ! there are many good folk 

Who think that thy Southern great college 
Will prove but a hoax among flourishing oaks, 

A poor, stunted crab-tree of knowledge. 
Mission Ridge, Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga, that fountain 

Of chivalrous boasting and rant, 
Thy fortress and tower, now yield to the power. 

The genius and valor of Grant ! 
'Twas there that thy college, said crab-tree of knowledge. 

And eke some cathedral stood, 
Unorganized schemes, with pro-slavery aims. 

And cankered in root and in bud. 
Time was, if the cause of the slave could by laws 

Be bettered by thee in the South, 
Thou wouldst to thy cost see his manacles loosed 

Much rather than fastened in wrath. 
Such once were thy views. Ah ! why didst thou choose. 

In these days of war and secession, 
Thy Church to desert, and the Gospel pervert, 

To advocate wrong and oppression ? 



RHYMES TO THE BISHOPS OF THE P. E. CHURCH. 

Why peril thy soul in exchanging the stole 

For the sash, and the crook for the sabre, 
And the type of the dove, that sweet emblem of love, 

For symbols of death to thy neighbor ? 

II. 

Pre-eminent Elliott ! thou lord of the Helot I 

The fardel thou put'st on his back,* 
His freedom to gain by additional strain, 

May cause his poor heart-strings to crack. 
Most noble Athenian ! regard that Cyrenian 

Who helped in the load of the cross ; 
That cause to sustain, man, go sever in twain, man, 

Slave bonds, nor account it a loss. 

HI. 

Thou, Miser McDonough ! hast certainly won a 

Great name, as Dey of Algiers, 
Since heads of the Church light their lamps at thy torch, 

To audit slave labor and tears. 
Oh ! slave Theologians, the horse of the Trojans 

Was never more chock full of foes, 
Than meet in the swamp, village, city, and camp, 

Your long cherished plans to oppose. 

* Bishop Elliott is among those who have been endeavoring to carry out the 
scheme of the late John McDonough, the rich miser of Algiers (near New Orleans), 
who suffered his slaves, by extra work, to redeem themselves from bondage, after 
the expiration of a certain number of years, and the payment into his hands 
within that period of an amount equal, we think, to the full market value of the 
slave. Mr. McDonough made no pretensions to philanthropy. It was in the 
manner above stated that the Montpelier Institute was proposed to be maintained 
in Georgia, and a mission school in Louisiana, with a plantation to be worked by 
slaves, who should redeem themselves by extra hours of labor before day in the 
morning and after night in the evening. When thus redeemed, they should be 
transported to Liberia, and the price received for them laid out in purchasing in 
Virginia or CaroUna a gang of people who may be nearly double the number of 
those sent away. — See Reprosf of the Amer. Ch., p. 53. 

89 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



IV. 
So long, for the keys of tlie Church, on his knees 

Has he sought, it is matter of wonder 
That Thomas F. Davis, the friend of the slave, is 

Now anxious its union to sunder. 
Ah me ! thy crusaders, the negro traders, 

In church, and in State, Carolina, 
In worship of Cotton, and Rice — sometimes rotten- 

Surpass the celestials of China. 
Right Rev. Sirs ! apostolic o'erseers ! 

Your slaves, through divine revelation, 
By hook or by crook, once instructed, would look 

For freedom and civilization / 



Most excellent Otey I we gladly would vote ye 

A mitre more fitting thy fame, 
Than fair Tennessee is reported to be 

By those who most honor thy name. 
But thou, too, good Bishop, art looked to to fish up 

A tribute to Slavery's reign, 
Thy See the abode where the lash and the load 

Must for whites the ascendant retain. 

TI. 

Bishop Green ! Bishop Green ! think how oft thou hast been, 

Among many owners of slaves, 
A witness of crimes that dishonor the times. 

And the States that are cursed with such knaves ! 
Remember one Barnet, and Murrill, that Garnet,* 

So red, and so rich, and so rare, 

* Barnet and Murrill. Who indeed can forget that ever knew those worthies ? 
The name Murrill is historical in its way. The other is no less deserving an jm- 

90 



RHYMES TO THE BISHOPS OF THE P. E. CHURCH.. 

Procuring "prime weriches" forjudges on benches, 

To sooth them in sorrow and care. 
Is it true, as we hear, thou hast altered the prayer 

Of the Church for the President, naming 
That traitor instead, who ranks first on your bead, 

While rampant rebellion proclaiming ? 
Whoever absconds from his national bonds, 

Has need of much prayer and fasting ; 
But your constitution will make restitution 

(In case your dominion be lasting) 
For losses : all traitors pj'ofess to be haters 

Of meanness and wrong and aggression. 
But ever are wanting in aught but in vaunting 

To remedy fraud and oppression. 

VII. 

Dear politic Glennie ! the love of the penny* 

Must surely have blinded thine eyes. 
Or conjugal tears, and preposterous fears. 

Have made thee more cautious than wise. 
'Twas said that Lord Byron, once urged by thy sire on 

The union and freedom of Greece, 
Determined to work, from the bonds of the Turk, 

That heroic people's release. 
But now^ 'tis reported that thou hast consorted 

With those who make slaves in the west, 
By means which all freemen, or landsmen or seamen, 

If Christians, are bound to detest. 

mortality of infamy. Of course, the advertisements referred to will be questioned ; 
but the search for their authenticity may bring many worse ones to light. 

* The Rev. Alexander Glennie, rector of All Saints' Parish, "Wackamaw, S. C, 
is said to be the son of that Dr. G. in whose school at Dulwich Lord Byron passed 
two years, during which time he was more amiable than at any other period of his 
life. The Rev. A. G. has labored much in imparting rehgious instruction to ne- 
groes ; and is supposed by some, perhaps erroneously, to bo in favor of the slave 
trade, so strongly recommended by his neighbors and friends. 

91 



BURDEX OF THE SOUTH. 



If sons of the soil be the fittest to toil,* 

And show of salvation the might, 
Why, Lord, didst thou choose through a mission of Jews 

To sprinkle the heathen with light ? 
"Why, sirs, did your daddies, for Cottons and Paddies,f 

Import from the African shore, 
Through kidnapping knaves, teeming cargoes of slaves, 

While natives appeared at their door ? 

VIII. 

Bishop Lee ! Bishop Lee ! we are strangers to thee, 

Bishops Atkinson, Rutlege, and Cobb, 
Bishops Whittingham, Mead, Dr. Johns, who 'tis said 

Dissent from the views of James Robb.J 
He doubtlessly raves, who, for owners of slaves, 

Would text books attempt to indite ; 
Prohibition alone would but serve for a bone 

Of contention- — a tax upon light ! 

IX. 

Do you represent the apostles first sent ? 
Was theirs a command to enslave ? 

* If sons of the soil, dec. Tins seems to be a favorite maxim with Southern 
people. One needs only cast Ids eyes over the hst of bishops to be convinced of 
the fact ; and hence it may happen that the proudest State among them may have 
as its spiritual head a man of the lowest order of talents. Indeed, the Know- 
Nothing spirit is nowhere more rife than among Southern Churchmen — m short, 
among Christians of every denomination in the South, who are native born and 
slave owners. 

\ Paddy. Webster says, there is but one species of this grain, but alludes to 
several species of aquatic grasses of the genus zizania, found in North America 
called wild rice. Brandt, under the head Oryza, mentions an immense variety in 
its qualities. In its natural state, in the husk, it is called Paddy. If the reader 
does not like the plural in this sense, let it run as follows. Says Dan : 
"Why then did your daddies, or Britons or Paddies. 

^ James Pohb. An active, enterprising, experienced, and able man of business 
in New Orleans, stiU in the prime of manhood. He is expected to be one of the 
Stuyvesants of the University of the South. 

92 



RHYMES TO THE BISHOPS OF THE P. E. CHUECH. 

Did they, and all others, apostles and brothers. 

Go forth men to miii, not save ? 
George Washington Freeman, thou'rt destined to be, man. 

The first, if not worst, on the lists 
Of foes to the slave, from his birth to his grave, 

Among apostolic high priests !* 

X. 

Doctor Hawks ! Doctor Hawks !f he but jceringly talks 

Of fame, who to freedom denies 
A charter divine, from the innermost shrine 

Of a temple let down from the skies. 
In thy eloquent zeal, thou hast learned to feel 

That duty enjoins thee to save. 
From trials and pains, and from Tyranny's chains, • 

The heart-broken African slave. 
Thy loved Carolina than Egypt or China 

Might boast more historic renown. 
If, urged by thy voice, it caused slaves to rejoice, 

And thee, that their freedom was won. 

XI. 

Lament, ye green mountains I ye valleys and fountains ! 
Whose sons, when resolved upon fight, 

* Among apostolic, d:c. See IX. Dan, again busy with his suggestions, would 
read: 

"Of slave legislation, high priests," 

Alluding to the Bishop's famous pro-slavery sermons, delivered many years ago 
before the Legislature of North Carolina. AU these things have consequences. 

f S. R. devoutly believes that there is no real freedom save in the triumphs of 
Christianity. This is the New Jerusalem let down from heaven. There are two 
eminent brothers, to either of whom the above hnes may with propriety be ad- 
dressed. Utrum horvm mavis accipe. S. R., however, seems to have his thoughts 
chiefly upon that Chrysostom of the American Episcopal Church, Dr. F. L. Hawks, 
of New York, among whose writings he believes there is one volume, or more than 
one, upon Oriental Antiquities. 

93 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



Towards the north, and the east, and the south, and the west, 

Spread Liberty's banner of light. 
Lament, that your Bishop,* with sanative hyssop, 

From just execration would save 
Those villanous cravens, who fatten the ravens 

"With blood from the heart of a slave ! 
Perhaps, like our Hintons and Seaburys, bent on 

Defending slave owners and breeders, 
He hopes to find rochet rewards for his crotchet 

In aiding a church of seceders. 

Whose nearest akin has the marks on his skin 

Of the whip of a slave-owning tyrant, f 
Should not, one would think, be expected to wink 

On a process so painfully pliant ; 
Excepting a case when the power of grace 

Might urge to bear stripes as a martyr, 
Which, though not in name, may amount to the same 

Thing, just, as " catching a Tartar." 
'Tis said that our youth did, in fact and in truth, 

Not deny, but confess in his terrors, 
And cried, "I implore ! pray, forgive me ! give o'er — 

I own and repent of my errors." 

* Bishop Hopkins, of Yermont. See his Bible View of Slavery, lately published. 

\ Setting rhyme and satire aside, is it true, or is it not true, that a son of Bishop 
Hopkins, employed in the capacity of a teacher, was, some years ago, not one 
hundred miles from Bayou Goula, Plaquemines — or Baton Rouge — Louisiana, 
barbarously and unresistingly beaten by a Mississippi planter, for having corrected 
a little girl — his pupil? Is it true, or is it not true, that Mr. Hopkins (together 
with his brother-in-law and family) was compelled, as the consequence of these 
untoward events, to abandon both school and church in that neighborhood ? Here 
are some of the precious fruits of slavery, which the charitable Bishop seems 
disposed to overlook. Can we assign no reason for his upholding such a system ? 
Is the true one assigned in our doggerel rhymes ? In a word, has the Bishop 
now, or has he never had, or never expected to have, any direct personal interest 
in defending slavery 7 

94 



MEETIMG OF MRS. PARTINGTOiT AND MRS. GRUNDY. 



MEETING OF MRS. PARTINGTON AND MRS. GRUNDY, 

APTEE THE SESSION OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY 
OF THE SOUTH, HELD AT BEERSHEBA, GRUNDY COUNTY, TENNESSEE, 
JULY 4th, 1858. 

MRS. PARTINGTON LOQUITUR. 

I. 
Oh ! dear Mrs. Grundy ! how good, how ^'■jurMiidy" 

Divines add, 'tis thus to shake hands !* 
As these cuts mispresent, by our committees sent, 

In books, about money and lands. 
This mighty big college, we all must acknowledge, 

Is just what we want at the South; 
'Twill keep our boys pure, and their morals insure, 

From justice and mercy and truth. 

MRS. GRUNDY. 
II. 
Mrs. Partington, dear ! if it were not from fear 

Of my husband, I'd never agree 
That an acre of mine should, for such a design, 

Be ever surrendered in fee. 
But you know Sol. Grundy ! from Beersheba to Fundy 

Bay highlands, there breathes not a man. 
Nor round to Velasco, nor through to Francisco, 

(Thrice ten times the distance to Dan)* 

* Mrs. P. is evidently struck with an etching in one of tlie pamphlets of the 
Board of Trustees, representing a j)air of hands shaking each other in nubihus, 
under the motto Ecce quam bonum. Mrs. P. would finisli, or at least extend, the 
quotation in her own way : Ecce ! quam honum et jucundum. 

* The distance from Dan to Beersheba in Palestine was 110 miles. Mrs. Grundy, 
a well-educated lady of Tennessee, is therefore tolerably correct in supposing 
our Dan and our Beersheba as removed one from the other by thrice ten times 
that distance — say 4,200 miles. 

93 



BURDEN OF THE SOUTH. 



More wayward or queer, more morose, more severe, 

If aught interfere with his plan. 
Be the plan what it may, touching cotton or hay, 

Schools, negroes, taxes, so forth. 
Political measures, or mineral treasures, 

So freely discussed at the North ; 
Yet I, his poor "wife, am the plague of his life, 

If, forsooth, his mad projects I scan. 

III. 
Committed to lawyers, and courts termed " Oyers," 

He says he must now follow suit, 
In titles and lands, which this college demands 

(The vile, the detestable brute !) 
And heads of the college, all men of great knowledge, 

He thinks will sustain him, no doubt. 
Nor own that in this he has acted amiss, 

To keep me in darkness throughout ! 
Disguise how we may, ma'am I the truth must have way, ma'am ! 

These schools of slave owners and breeders 
Can never work well ; they but sink us to hell, 

And make us a land of seceders, 
Alas ! must Sewanee, in fact and in law be. 

And eke our Beersheba Springs, 
A fountain of wrongs, and a depot for thongs, 

And a hotbed of cockatrice stings ! 
Of morals so pure, which your wit would insure. 

The less that is said 's soonest mended. 
Would to God, my good dame ! that the college you name 

Could thus with our gossip be ended ! 
96 



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BURDEN OF THE SOlITE 

IN VERSE, 



OB, 



POEMS ON SLAVERY, 



GRAVE, HUMOROUS, DIDACTIC, AND SATIRICAL. 



BY 

SENNOIA RUBEK. 



NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY EVERARDUS WARNER, 

1 VESEY STREET (ASTOR HOUSE). 




-?^^ 



COXTENTS. 



CONTENTS. 

Scenes in Congress ........ 

Lines to Albert Pike of Arkansas ...... 

Poets and Statesmen versus Slavery. — Note on Edmuud Burke 
Appeal to Bakth and LivrsGSTONE.— King Cotton and other Notabilities 
of Commcrec. — New Torli Riots. — Eighth Avenne Cars. — Deportation of 
Slaves, &c. ........ 

Songs. — Addressed to His Excellency, Abraham Lincoln 
A Pro-Slavert Bishop. — Address to the House of Bishops of the Protest- 
ant Episcopal Church . . . . . . 

Scnis.M AMONG tue Methodists. — Presbyterians. — Mortara. — Stanhope Bur 
leigh. — Baptists. — Unitarians. — Cassius M. Clay, his noble character 



24 
33 

35 

43 



l^iNES Addressed to the Society or Friends.— Rural Scenes (supposed in 
Pennsylvania). — Rachael Barker. — Louise. — Song, Little Rachael of Pough- 
kcepsie .......... 57 

SotTHERN Family Picture.— Little Fanny.— Tragic Drama. —Lines to Mary. 
— Note on Slave Catchers. — Bloodhounds, &c. — Mr. Helper. — Impending 
Crisis .......... G3 

Rhymes.— Senator Seward, Lord Brougham, Baron Humboldt, Lord 
Palmerston and others. — Cyrus W. Field, Abraham Lincoln, Queen 
Victoria, Atlantic Telegraph ....... 73 

To Her Grace, the Duchess of Sutherlan-d. — Song — supposed to be 

written by the Duchess of S . — Song ..... 77 

Lines to the Hon. Miss Murray , . . . . 84 

Jeux D'Esprit on the Southern Bishops of the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church ..... ... 88 

Meeting of Mrs. Partington and Mrs. Grundy after the Session 
OF the Board of Trustees of the Universitt of the South, at 
Beersheba, G. Co., Tennessee ...... 9c 



u 



NOTICE. 

NOW READY FOR THE PRESS, 

BY 

SEIS'NOIA RUBEK, 

THE FOLLOWING POEMS: 

STANZAS TO QUEEN VICTORIA 

AND THEIR IMPERIAL MAJESTIES, 

ALEXANDER II. OF RUSSIA AND NAPOLEON III. OF FRANCE." 
''IN MEMOMAM." 

BEOOKS AND SUMNER: 

IN TWO CANTOS. 

ODEEIOK AlsD MILLY: 

IN NINE CANTOS. 



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